Startup Webaroo to put the 'Web on a Hard Drive'? 340
An anonymous reader writes "A new startup called Webaroo is launching Monday with an audacious proposition: You can search the Web without a net connection of any kind. Initial release consists of 'Web packs' on specific topics such as news, city guides or Wikipedia. Later this year they're promising a full-Web version that you can carry on a laptop -- provided you're willing to devote something in the neighborhood of 80 gig."
ownership (Score:3, Interesting)
Not just access (Score:3, Interesting)
I've got news for Husick. I'm a lawyer who have sets of Statutes, Court Rules and Local Rules behind his desk. I still look them up online to make sure I have the most recent version. I can't afford not to.
Search performance? Rarely, if ever a problem.
Siphon traffic away from "increasingly crowded broadband networks?" They make money from that traffic. They can't, if necessary, charge per data download? Tier the service by download bandwidth? Charge more? Build a better network?
The first cell phone or wireless device that expects me pre-download some portion of the net, that portion being determined by somebody else, is the first one I can cross off my list.
Save $5 or %10 at the airport by not connecting? What if I want to send or receive e-mail? Get the latest news, business or stock information? I'm AT AN AIRPORT, which implies I have some money, and in his context that I'm on business. I'm going to foregoe a net connection for $5 or $10? If my employer is that tight, I'm looking for another job anyway -- one that doesn't use Webaroos' services.
This reminds me of software solutions to cramped hard drive spaces awhile back. On the fly file compression and expansion when data size was outstriping hard drive size for a short period of time. (Remember the file corruption.) Even though there was a market for those products, barely, everyone and his brother knew that market was going to go away Real Soon Now.
Hm.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Though, my vaguely disturbing ramblings do raise an interesting point, maybe - what's their stance on the indecent materials that make up a good deal of teh webernet? When they say the "whole internet," do they MEAN goatse too?
Re:Is this really the right time? (Score:1, Interesting)
Could just work... (Score:3, Interesting)
Combine these together, and the program could offer you 80 gigs of data to just sit on your computer and be sifted through at yuor leisure. It would be able to follow you through, and find exactly how you get through your data. When it needs to, it can spider into areas that it might think you'd want to go (Been looking at a lok of Wikipedia? Next time you connect, it goes an picks up some wikibooks).
The best part, is that all the "Big Brother" information is being stored on YOUR computer, not their servers. You want that info, Bush? You'll have to supoena every user.
If they tergeted this more towards a desktop-search type thing with better search algos than Google, this could just work.
a nice service is possible. (Score:5, Interesting)
Archives are good and this can be a useful service. Providing 80 select gigs on a hard drive to libraries and schools is a useful until US networks get where they should be. Their software can keep those 80 GB up to snuff at night. When you leave the cache, you ... gasp ... get the new content. In the mean time, things are much faster when it matters. Mirrored content will always be a good idea. Look at the debian distribution system, for example.
Good luck to the people at Webaroo. So long as they don't apply for stupid patents that give them an exclusive franchise to distribution systems, they are AOK.
The road warrior thing will flop, though. People are going to stay where there's a network or pay the $10. It's the one piece of live information that requires the hook up. The speed of the rest is gravy for those people.
Re:Sounds like a cache to me (Score:2, Interesting)
And, of course, selling a subscription service that lets you download updates of your favorite internet content to your laptop... a technology formerly known as, well, "browsing the web". Using slick marketing to sell people stuff they already have, was a huge success for the bottled water industry... can't blame these guys for trying it on the internets.
Re:skewed world (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dotcom v3.0 (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically what he said was that venture capitalists raised a whole bunch of money that they didn't spend during the last boom. This money is raised from investors and is given to the VCs for a limited time. The VCs make money from the management fees they collect for dealing with this money, usually 1 or 2% of the total amount. But, if they don't invest, then the money AND the fees get sent back to the original investors.
The time limit on investment is usually about 10 years. So if we say that the boom started around '96, then some of these limits have already expired, and the rest of them will expire within the next 4 years.
Use it or lose it. And the VCs will definitely use it.
feh (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, if I know I won't be online for a week, what stops me from just CURLing or WGETing whatever I plan on reading for the next couple of weeks? And that goes only for static content like books and articles. Everything else is cannot be simply cached.
Re:The Net on a disk is not a net (Score:2, Interesting)
That's for IE, but I'm sure most competing browsers have the ability.