Before Summly and Trimit — There was Insightlopedia

This is the story about a 19 Year Old prodigy from U.C. Berkeley that was squelched by Google because he wanted to test the limits of search engine results and come up with a smarter and automated question answering system that was quick to the point. Google crushed this Berkeley Student's dreams, and is now promoting someone else that is doing the same exact thing.

The news has been buzzing about a 17-year old from Australia who has made a name for himself for combining snippets of search results into simple answers for people. Before Nick D’Aloisio created Trimit and Summly, a precocious 19 year old named Peter Nguyen was coming up with ways to change the face of search results forever in his dorm room. While on a missionary trip to China later that year, he had created a search engine algorithm called, “Insightlopedia,” which is now defunct due to a Google ban.

“The engine started out as a way for people to ask questions and receive answers immediately. I wrote algorithms by hand that scraped google and yahoo results, contextually generating a page that had the most relevant answers to a question. They were short, sweet, and simple. My friends still ask me about it today..

“It was clean, and it was very useful for people. It wasn’t just a search engine in a search engine– it was ME choosing what was best for users. It highlighted the most important parts of any page or question, and these pages also included the most relevant Youtube/Vimeo videos that pertained to it. Many people were looking for Pokemon Black Edition at that time.

“I also scraped all the world’s top answer-question websites and came up with a list of questions to input into my system. There were about 750,000 questions that people regularly asked every day, and I have all the metrics to prove it. Every question that was answered by Insightlopedia was cached for others to use as well, and the keywords were noted on the very page.

“It was an SEO juggernaut. These pages included the best answers for every question imaginable, and answered every question thoroughly and thoughtfully. Strangely enough, it was made from search result snippets from Yahoo Search Results, which at the time were actually better than Google Search Results.”

17-Year-Old Summly Founder Nick D’Aloisio’s Immodest Goal: Change The Way You Read News

“So the code-savvy teen developed Trimit, an app that summarized articles into 140-character tweets. The app got the attention of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka Shing, who invested $300,000 into Nick’s idea, which was ultimately refined in Summly. The Summly app first launched in December 2011.“

My Name is Peter Nguyen, and I did this– 3 years before D’Aloisio. I created Insightlopedia in 2010. I did it better, smarter, faster, and I had over 500 thousand articles indexed by Google. Google didn’t even know it was Yahoo’s search results until someone complained that my search results were ranking higher than their original article.

Something needs to be done about this insightlopedia dot com site. It’s total spam, and Google is punishing me and my websites for having links on THEIR website. Links I didn’t even put there! They’re just copying and pasting my URLs onto their sites! And when I use Google to search for one of my articles, the article isn’t listed, but insightlopedia’s link to my article is!

Insightlopedia was created for Peter and his friends. He took everyone’s input and criticism to heart, and sought to make a sincere and smart system that could answer questions immediately in the best way possible. Google erased that dream from the Internet archives. Now, Google, Ashton Kutcher, Yahoo, and Li Ka Shing are investing in a 17 year old that is doing the EXACT same things Peter was doing while on a missionary trip to China.

“I was helping people, but Google wasn’t helping me. I gave up my life to quit college and help create transparency in Chinese NGOs. The system today has over 300 organizations using it, and over 1000 projects completed.”

“I had over 500,000 pages indexed by Google, all of them a hybrid of Google, Youtube, and Yahoo search results. They answered every question immediately, and if it wasn’t in the database, the question was added to it. I MADE Trimit before Trimit was even made. I was penalized for it by Google, though, and I will never let them live that down.

“Google banned me for doing what Summly and Trimit do today —but 3 years ago. I had something huge, and I was making GOOD MONEY from it. Summly and Trimit also steal content from search engines and articles, framing it as their own. I learned that other people spend their hard earned money and time to generate unique and useful content. I then came to the realization that I had to stop, and Google made that even more apparent.

Insightlopedia was banned by Google’s search results on Peter’s birthday on February 24th, 2011. 2 years later, Trimit and Summly are doing the exact same things, but they are being praised by the very same companies that gave Nguyen a hard time.

"It made my birthday much less fun.."

“At the end of the day, I had an awesome time being the guy that no one knew about– but you probably used Insightlopedia at one point or another. It had that type of impact on all of Google’s search engine results.”

He is currently enrolled in the Masters of Information Systems program at Berkeley. Last semester, Nguyen created a system called TorB for one of his classes. It aggregates news content and displays it very similarly to Summly. What’s amazing is that he wrote all the code in 3 nights. He also won the Berkeley PLAY Conference's Hackathon with his award-winning LynxL Transit Engine.

In his spare time, Nguyen invents gadgets for disabled persons and gives them away for free. He created CrossBounding earlier this year, which aims to democratize Health and Fitness Training. He is a serial entrepreneur in need of investors and funding.

“Leading fitness classes is not just for Physical Trainers– everyone has the potential to help others. In everything I do, I want to give back to the people who helped me get there. I just wish people noticed me back then.. when I was truly doing revolutionary things. It’s sad that it took 3 years for people to realize the genius of it.”

Before Summly and Trimit– There was Insightlopedia.

Your thoughts?

You can reach Peter Nguyen for contact at ptt.nguyen [at] berkeley [dot] edu