"User data is of no interest to us"

Personal details: Andreas Wiebe, born in 1974, is a Russian-German. He came to Germany in 1989 and studied industrial electronics in Bonn. He founded various companies whose products have won several IT innovation awards. In 2008, he founded Hulbee AG for hardware and software development in Switzerland.

Swisscows.ch is operated by Hulbee AG in Egnach TG. Werbewoche spoke to Andreas Wiebe, CEO and founder of Hulbee, about his project, business model and expansion plans. Wiebe will also be appearing at the Swiss Marketing Day in Lucerne on March 3.

 
In 2014, the Swiss most frequently googled "World Cup 2014", "iPhone 6" and "Michael Schumacher". Your search engine Swisscows was launched in July, in the middle of the World Cup - what does the Swisscows ranking look like?
Andreas Wiebe: World Cup 2014, iPhone 6, Conchita Wurst.

Swisscows.ch is not just a search engine, but the first intelligent answer engine, you write on the website. Can you elaborate on this?
With search engines such as Google or Yahoo, the search term entered is searched in the index of the engine and returned, regardless of the topic it matches. This results in thousands of documents. But as the volume of information grows, this is not fit for the future. That's why we at Swisscows rely on a semantic search: behind each term is a thick folder with many keywords that match the search term. World Cup 2014, Brazil, Messi, Blatter, but also World Cup 2010, World Championships in Athletics or Wachtmeister (Wm) match "World Cup". Swisscows analyzes them, summarizes them and displays them in the form of tiles.
 
So I don't just get pages and pages of results, but also a visual representation of possible correlations that allow me to narrow down the search with a single click?
That's right. Overall, the searcher gets to the desired information more quickly. That's why we're talking about an answer engine.
 
After launching the web search, you launched additional assets.
Secondly, we launched "Annonce" for advertisers. This is the place where companies can place advertisements. It works in a similar way to Google's Adwords, but was developed in-house. We then launched image search, video search in November and music search in December. We now also have a mobile app.
 
What is different about image and music searches compared to Google?
If you move the cursor over the images, three functions appear that make this image search more efficient. It can also be narrowed down geographically. For the music search, we work together with Soundcloud, probably the largest music database. Thanks to a player, users can also put together their own playlist and listen to it on the go. The security of the user is important here: this area remains completely anonymous.
 
What added value does Swisscows offer in the video search?
At the moment, it's just a search on YouTube, because that's what our users wanted. However, as YouTube monitors and evaluates its users, we interposed a proxy server. This means that YouTube can neither see where the user comes from nor who is searching for what. The only thing YouTube can see is that the search is being carried out from Swisscows. The user can therefore search discreetly. However, if they want to watch a video, we will warn them because they will then leave the protected area. However, we are in the process of setting up our own video portal, but that will take some time.

Are you planning anything else?
In the second half of February, we will be launching a translation service. This will be followed by a tool that allows users to search videos for audio and text. Thirdly, we are planning a service with which texts and even entire books can be summarized to any length.

The website states: Swisscows does not store any user data. Neither IP addresses nor tracking cookies, nor search terms. Nothing at all. Why?
I have been warning about surveillance for 14 years. We are not interested in this data and we don't want to pass it on to anyone. Our marketing department did raise the objection that we were foregoing quick revenue. But we have decided in favor of user security.

Who can guarantee that you really don't store any data?
At the moment, as the founder of Swisscows, I simply give my word of honor. But we are in the process of setting up a security advisory board made up of credible and competent people who can confirm our decision not to use data storage.

This is all the more necessary as a European secret service once bought a software license for document management from you.
Yes, that was in 2002, but at one of my other companies. Hulbee AG does not do this.

Nevertheless, this brings you close to the secret services and the military. Doubts as to whether you and Hulbee AG are really clean would be understandable.
It's the other way around: precisely because I saw what was going on with the secret services at the time, I came to the conclusion that the user must be protected at all costs. Edward Snowden also worked in the NSA system and decided to leave at some point. I felt the same way, even though I was never as deeply involved as he was.

Swisscows claims to have 3.5 million page impressions (PI) and around 800,000 unique users (UU) per month. However, Swisscows cannot be surveyed by NET-Metrix.
Because this requires us to set cookies and thus store some of the user information.

But how do you arrive at the figures?
Our server shows us how many search queries have been made and which search terms have been entered. There are currently 3.5 million search queries per month. From this, we deduce that around four to five sites are viewed for each search query - just like Google. This gives us the approximate number of UUs. However, we do not know their IP addresses, where they come from or where they go.

So you count the search queries, but cannot have them authenticated.
Correct. And the number of UUs is just an estimate.

800,000 UU correspond roughly to the reach of Bluewin or Blick online. 3.5 million PI correspond roughly to the page impressions at Ticketcorner.
We are very happy that Swisscows is already meeting with such good demand after just six months.

What does your business model look like?
We have the "Annonce" offer, which can be found at the bottom of our website. An ad there costs at least 150 francs and it works like Google: if someone clicks on it, one franc is deducted from their credit.

How are your advertising sales doing?
It is rising slowly. Large companies are also currently testing us. This test phase should come to an end in the middle of the year. Like Google, we will then charge different prices depending on the search term. Placing an ad in the "iPhone" environment will then cost more than for "marsh marigold". In terms of price, however, we will be cheaper than Google.

When do you expect to break even?
Swisscows should break even at the end of 2015. We also have a banner tile on the homepage - this is for branding advertising and therefore more expensive than an advertisement.

How much have you invested in Swisscows?
A few million. There are currently 54 employees working for the company.

How did you come up with the name Swisscows?
We definitely wanted Swissness in the name. For several reasons: We want to emphasize that we operate from Europe and not from the USA. In the current cyber war, Swiss also stands for neutrality. Thirdly, Swiss also stands for quality. For the second part of the name, I was looking for a term that symbolizes Switzerland. For me, it's the cows, more than Rolex or cheese. What's more, the cow is not aggressive and its milk is a wonderful product. It's the same with Swisscows: We don't want to attack or spy on anyone. Our product should only benefit people. 

Are you thinking about expansion?
We are already active in Germany and Austria, and demand there is also high. As we have received many inquiries from the UK and the USA, we will also be active there from around May 2015 - under the same name. However, the servers will remain in Switzerland. We are also continuing to develop our offering. Because what we are proving with Swisscows, we will now also offer as products for companies - for their search for internal data. We have already had a lot of requests for this.

Swisscows is therefore the figurehead for Hulbee, so to speak.
Correct.

You will be appearing at the Swiss Marketing Day on March 3, 2015, which has the motto "From Big Data to Big Inspiration". What will your message be?
By big data, I mean all the unstructured data that is stored unused in companies. Big data is knowledge that is in chaos. Those who learn to understand and use this knowledge will shape the future. Nevertheless, I appeal to companies: Refrain from tasking your employees with structuring this data. Instead, get tools that analyze this information automatically. Hulbee has been developing such tools for years, such as the "DataCloud" software (http://www. hulbee.com/products/datacloud/).

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