Quixey: The Google of App Searchesby DAVE DICOLA  on MAY 4, 2011

If you can think of it, then you can bet someone else has, too.  And you can

bet that someone has created an app for it already.  But knowing the app is

probably out there is one thing.  Finding it can be quite another.

Until now, anyway.

Enter Quixey, a beta-stage search engine site that bills itself as the one-stop,

functional-search source for finding applications based on what users what to

accomplish with those apps.

It all started (according to an April 7, 2011 Quixey press release) when co-

founders Tomer Kagen and Liron Shapira were hungry for a burrito.  They got

to pondering things a bit, and when they realized that if they punched “find an

open burrito place” into a search engine, places like Yelp, Foursquare or

Facebook Places wouldn’t come up.

Eureka!  The idea for Quixey was born, and 18 months later its seven-

member team of search engine jockeys launched the beta version of the site.

Now, users can initiate a search based upon what they want an application to

do rather than trying to find the virtual “needle in the haystack” by browsing

popular apps or searching by developer.

According to Kagen, Quixey has only managed to take care of “three to five

percent” of what is on the company’s radar screen, but further says that he is

pleased with early results nonetheless.

Quixey has managed to secure seed funding ($400K, according to some

reports) from Archimedes Ventures LLC and Innovation Endeavors.  With the

seed money, the Quixey team is planning to focus on adding a machine

learning layer to its capabilities, Kagen said.

We think it will be very interesting to see how this new “Google” of app

searches winds up progressing.  Especially later in 2011, when Quixey starts

making app search data available to developers.

Kind of gives, “yeah, there’s an app for that” a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?