

LinkedIn Buys Real-Time, Hosted Search Startup IndexTank - rksprst
http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/11/linkedin-buys-real-time-hosted-search-startup-indextank/

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diego
I want to believe that my own post is more interesting than the TC article :)

[http://blog.indextank.com/1221/indextank-linkedin-
acquires-i...](http://blog.indextank.com/1221/indextank-linkedin-acquires-
indextank/)

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ra
Congrats! If you have any customers in APac you need taken care of, drop me an
email.

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mark_l_watson
"IndexTank says that LinkedIn has agreed to maintain the IndexTank service
running for the next six months"

So, the Heroku plugin goes away and customers like Reddit have to make other
arrangements. Interesting that they would shut down a viable business - I
don't understand that.

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justinchen
Wow, we were thinking about integrating with IndexTank. Glad we didn't.

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espeed
Yeah, we had decided to go that way too, but now I don't know. Congrats to the
team, and I'll be interested to see what they open source.

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nzadrozny
Congrats to the LinkedIn and IndexTank folks for the successful
exit/acquisition.

Apologies for tooting my own horn here, but for anyone wondering about
alternatives for hosted search, there's always Apache Solr and fizx's and my
hosted service at <http://websolr.com/>. We're bootstrapped, profitable, and
going on two years old. And we intend to be around for a while!

Feel free to hit me up with questions!

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jhdavids8
I contemplated websolr recently but went with IndexTank simply due to the free
storage they provided. It's nice to test out the service in dev mode to see if
it's a good fit before committing to paying for it. Any chance Websolr offers
an option like this down the road?

Plus, Solr just seemed to struggle with geo search. I used Sunspot as my
search interface and had to specify a minimum precision of 6 (supposedly a 6+
mile bounding box) to get any results, even those that were less than a mile
away. I know Solr uses geohashing, but it just appeared wildly inaccurate...at
least for me.

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nzadrozny
> Plus, Solr just seemed to struggle with geo search.

I hear you on that. Solr only relatively recently got a decent, official
Spatial search API with its version 3 release. We've got a Solr 3 cluster up
at Websolr (with lots of other tasty stuff, like real-time updates), but
Sunspot is lagging behind a bit.

I'm one of the maintainers of Sunspot and we're pushing out a new 1.3
maintenance/bugfix release within the next few days, which should clear the
way for Solr 3 support -- and much better spatial search -- in Sunspot 1.4.

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jhdavids8
Fantastic. I just sent the email. I'll be on the lookout for Sunspot 1.4 and
its improvements in geo search. Thanks!

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nostromo
Super happy for you guys, congrats!! :)

Super not happy to find a new search solution in the next six months. :(

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rksprst
Yep, founders+investors win. Customers lose.

I guess that's the new way to run a business. Exit > customers.

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diego
I am honestly and seriously committed to help our customers as much as time
permits. I don't want this to be another "cloud provider gets acquired, users
unhappy." Part of our team will be dedicated to _personally_ helping out each
and every one of our customers find the best solution over the next six
months.

Ideally we'll get other providers to implement the IndexTank API for a
seamless transition. I will post updates about this.

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omfg
Can someone list some alternatives to IndexTank? We rely on them pretty
heavily and this is going to leave us, and I imagine quite a few other
companies, in a bind.

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nzadrozny
IndexTank have already said that they'll open source their code so others can
take up the mantle. Another alternative is the excellent open source Apache
Solr search engine, discussed elsewhere in this thread.

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rksprst
Great to see a fellow startup get acquired.

But, I wish they held off on the acquisition until other "cloud providers"
were willing and ready to implement these services that will be open sourced.
Or at least keep your service up until then. This is great for the IndexTank
team, but screws all of their customers (of which I am one).

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jhandl
We are going to do exactly what you described. If everything goes as planned,
IndexTank will continue to live on.

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rksprst
"If everything goes as planned" is not something any business can rely on.

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jhandl
I believe it is not uncommon for businesses to rely on plans.

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rksprst
It is common for a business to rely on it's own plans. It is uncommon (or at
the very least a bad business decision) for a business to reply on the plans
of another business.

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PabloOsinaga
I am really psyched to see IndexTank open source their technology (as notes
mentions).

Very intrigued to know which specific components of their technology will they
open source - and how they fit within linkedin sna different projects
<http://sna-projects.com/sna/> and lucene / other open source projects at
large.

Really curious to know if any IndexTank / linkedin team member reading.

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jhandl
I'm reading. :)

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PabloOsinaga
So what specifically are you guys open sourcing and how does that complement
existing open source search technologies like Lucene and the things that the
folks over at Linkedin SNA have open sourced (e.g., Bobo, Sensei)?

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jhandl
It is our intention to open-source what the next provider will need to keep
the service running. It's too early to tell what that exactly will be or how
it will complement other SNA projects.

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herbivore
Congrats to the team!

That said, it proves once again that entrepreneurs should not feel discouraged
by the presence of competitors in their field. Continue to build your own
great product. Your biggest, most successful competitor may be the next one to
fail for whatever reason or, hopefully for them, have an early exit which
clears the field for your product/service.

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wslh
IndexTank acquired by LinkedIn, Sapus Media's Cocos2D acquired by Zynga, two
examples of excelent and very focused Argentinian products. Hope to see more
from the south in the near future. It shows that there is light and a lot of
value beyond software factories.

Congrats to Diego!

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foxylad
Darn. I wanted to integrate IndexTank into our service next week, now I need
to look at alternatives. The sooner you can confirm what happens next, the
better.

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diego
Email support at indextank dot com, happy to help you out.

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veb
Just got the email. Congrats guys! You're one of my favorite start-ups, and
I'm really glad to see you guys succeed.

When's the party? :-)

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mariano
Muy contento por la noticia :)

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pibefision
me sumo! felicitaciones Diego & Team.

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jhandl
Gracias! :)

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devinfoley
I suppose this means that LinkedIn is moving away from Lucene NRT Search?

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iag
Congrats to IndexTank team!

