Volunia, an Italian search engine more like Facebook than Google

The new Italian search engine named Volunia was presented at the University of Padua. Currently, the engine is not yet available and only a few beta testers, selected based on their requests, will be able to benefit from the search engine in development. There are no women in the startup, while regarding the purely technical side, the servers are located in Sardinia where part of the development staff is also based.

Massimo Marchiori, the Italian researcher who fifteen years ago was at the court of Google (then just a startup) and was among the inventors of Mountain View’s search algorithms, decided to return to Italy to launch his new challenge. A new search engine that, as Marchiori himself said, does not aim to compete with Google. At least not immediately.

While waiting to get to know Volunia better, we can only anticipate that at first glance it resembles more Facebook than Google with a strong focus on social search. The resemblance, however, from a graphical point of view (although it is still early to say, with only a few slides available), is to a search made by maps.

The press conference presenting Volunia, which also saw some awkward opening moments when the slide projector did not work, was not very exciting although Marchiori demonstrated he knows how to speak in a very simple and humble way to the audience and to the many users and professionals connected via streaming.

Some doubts remain about the potential success of this initiative, which so far has cost about two million euros. What will be Volunia’s core business? Will there be room for advertising and where? How will it resolve privacy issues (the engine seems very driven from a social perspective)? These doubts also arose on various social platforms like Twitter, where many have been rather lukewarm about the actual success of the project.

Some think that in 2012 it is difficult to get such a startup off the ground with “only” two million euros while others believe the final destination for this engine is just to be sold. We will see.