Lavva Wants to Burn Google

TechFlash reports: A new search engine is hoping to grab market share from Google and Bing by focusing on visual search results and allowing users to interact with others as they look for information on the Web.

"Your peers help you with your search," said Lavva co-founder Catalin Lazar. "You are actually retrieving information that people --rather than an algorithm -- have said that you should see on a given search. And we make it visually pleasing and very easy to use, and you are allowed to share your search information with your friends."

The company also is touting itself as the "greenest" search engine on the planet with servers powered by hydroelectricity from a new multi-million dollar data center that opened last month in Kelowna, B.C. It also plans to highlight environmental news and organizations.

In development for the past three years, Lavva started publicly testing the service a few weeks ago and some of the social features have yet to be rolled out. For example, the company is still working on a chat feature that allows users to chat about search results in real time.

It is also planning to incorporate search results from friends who are chatting on Facebook and Twitter.

Lavva is split between Toronto and Seattle, with most of the technical operations in Canada and the business development operations here. About 20 people are working on Lavva, with many members of the team working part-time for equity.

"Pretty much everybody is living off savings, and we are making a little bit of money here and there," said Lazar, a 36-year-old former Microsoft contractor who is based in Kirkland.

He said the company is now looking to raise between $5 million to $10 million, an ambitious undertaking given the big time rivals in the market.

That competition doesn't appear to be holding back Lazar, who wants to grow the service to 10 million to 15 million unique visitors in the next 18 months. One way that they plan to do that is by targeting the search service to college kids, with a campaign slated to start this fall as students return to campus.

"The world does need another search engine, I believe," said Lazar, who serves as president. "The 'Craiglist-type of search' is kind of dated and user interaction is very low, especially for the Web 2.0 technologies that exist. We look to address the connectivity, the visual aspect of it and the democratic voice of the user, which we think is very important and has been lacking up until now."

Lazar thinks that Lavva will appeal to 18-to-24-year-olds who he says are "tired of the standard search experience" and are looking for a more "green" way to find information online. The company's servers are powered by renewable energy, with engineers at the company hoping to eventually move from a hydroelectric to a solar-based system.

"For us, it is not just a PR thing. We really believe that and we really want to go to a full renewable energy solar type system in the next year or two as we grow," he said.

Right off the bat, Lavva has a different feel with those who visit the home page seeing a map of the world. Clicking on a continent -- say North America or Africa -- segments news based on the region. Most of the news comes from mainstream media organizations such as CNN, BBC and Reuters.

Eventually, Lazar said they want users to be able to drill down into the map so they can segment information by country, state/province, city and neighborhood.

Despite the troubles in the economy and the tough financing market, Lazar said he's confident in the company's ability to raise money even as it goes up against titans such as Google and Microsoft.

"I really believe we have something to offer," he said. "We are offering connectivity outside of just the search experience, and I think that is big and I think it is going to be even bigger in the upcoming years."