Yippy was a
metasearch engine
A metasearch engine (or search aggregator) is an online information retrieval tool that uses the data of a web search engine to produce its own results. Metasearch engines take input from a user and immediately query search engines for results. ...
that grouped searched results into clusters. It was originally developed and released by
Vivísimo in 2004 under the name Clusty, before Vivisimo was later acquired by
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
and Yippy was sold in 2010 to a company now called Yippy, Inc. At the time, the website received 100,000 unique visitors a month.
From August 2019, Yippy's main page stated their searches were powered by
IBM Watson
IBM Watson is a computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language. It was developed as a part of IBM's DeepQA project by a research team, led by principal investigator David Ferrucci. Watson was named after IBM's fou ...
, asserting it was "the ''right'' search" (italics theirs) that delivered "fair search results based on balanced algorithms."
In 2019, Yippy CEO Rich Granville presented the search engine as free of censorship of conservative views, calling it an "intelligence enterprise" with high-level White House connections, telling a reporter "you don't know who you’re fucking with."
From late April 2021 to early June 2022, the website would redirect to
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is an American software company focused on online privacy whose flagship product is a search engine named DuckDuckGo. Founded by Gabriel Weinberg in 2008, its later products include browser extensions and a custom DuckDuckGo web ...
.
History
Clusty was developed by Vivísimo in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
. Vivísimo was a company built on Web search technology developed by
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...
researchers, much like
Lycos
Lycos, Inc. (stylized as LYCOS), is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company ...
was a decade earlier. Clusty added new features and a new interface to the previous Vivisimo clustering web metasearch. Different tabs also offer metasearch for news, jobs (in partnership with Indeed.com), U.S. government information, and
blogs
A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...
. Customized tabs allow users to select sources for their own metasearch to create personalized tabs.
Yippy Inc., formerly Cinnabar Ventureess Inc., acquired Clusty for $5.55 million in May 2010. The acquisition included the license for the Velocity software, which was bought by IBM in 2012 and renamed IBM Watson Explorer.
In 2012, Yippy received "Welcome to the Cloud" as a registered trademark with the USPTO.
Yippy acquired MuseGlobal 6,500 pre-built Smart Connectors fully documented Source Factory that monitors, maintains and updates the Muse Smart Connectors on a 24/7 basis and guarantees highly sustainable and scalable use.
Yippy received "Welcome to your Data" as a registered trademark with the
USPTO
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Ale ...
.
In 2016, Yippy released its Yippy Search Appliance (YSA) as a
Google Search Appliance (GSA) replacement to market after Google announced it was sunsetting the GSA and capitalizing on the $500M revenue from the GSA.
In 2019, Yippy Inc. CEO Rich Granville organized in Atlanta a "Digital Soldiers Conference", with the aim of preparing "patriotic social media warriors" for a coming "digital civil war" against "censorship and suppression". The event featured several prominent
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
supporters, including
Michael Flynn
Michael Thomas Flynn (born 24 December 1958) is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served as the 24th U.S. national security advisor for the first 22 days of the first Trump administration. He resigned in light of reports tha ...
and
George Papadopoulos
George Demetrios Papadopoulos (; born August 19, 1987) is an author and former member of the foreign policy advisory panel to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. On October 5, 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to a felony charge of mak ...
. At the time, Granville also used many
QAnon
QAnon ( ) is a far-right conspiracy theories in United States politics, American political conspiracy theory and political movement that originated in 2017. QAnon centers on fabricated claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals kno ...
references on
Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
.
In late April 2021, Yippy's site started redirecting to
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is an American software company focused on online privacy whose flagship product is a search engine named DuckDuckGo. Founded by Gabriel Weinberg in 2008, its later products include browser extensions and a custom DuckDuckGo web ...
. As of August 2021, the Georgia Secretary of State website shows Yippy, Inc's corporate status as "Revoked".
See also
*
Data clustering
Cluster analysis or clustering is the data analyzing technique in which task of grouping a set of objects in such a way that objects in the same group (called a cluster) are more similar (in some specific sense defined by the analyst) to each o ...
*
Metasearch engine
A metasearch engine (or search aggregator) is an online information retrieval tool that uses the data of a web search engine to produce its own results. Metasearch engines take input from a user and immediately query search engines for results. ...
*
Vivísimo
References
External links
Archived page
{{Web search engines
Internet properties established in 2004
Defunct internet search engines
Metasearch engines