Looking for porn? Now you can just Booble it
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Online pornography aficionados got a boost when a US entrepreneur launched a new search engine for raunchy Internet material dubbed "Booble.com".
An unnamed New York-based former Internet executive has pumped his own money into the new Website that has styled itself as a light-hearted parody of the world's largest and best-known search engine, Google.com.
The new service, which its founder said was intended to be "fun, but useful too," allows porn fiends to filter through more than 6,000 hand-selected listings of Internet adult content.
"I have a web development operation where there is a bit of a frat boy atmosphere, so we stumbled on Booble," said the founder, who requested anonymity to avoid being barred from his daughter's school softball games.
"What was a bit fun and a joke became a business. People like it. It makes people smile. It's funny and I think it'll grow," the man in his mid-40s told AFP.
The adult sites to which Booble users will be directed have been filtered to exclude illegal or extremely hard-core material, using criteria including whether a site is worth the price it charges viewers and the quality of its images.
"It is fun, but there is a real story behind Booble in that it's hard to find good adult content," the founder said.
"There are about 25,000 adult sites and a fraction of sites in really major categories like movies and music and sports, causing a lot of clutter and confusion."
The businessman, who said he was once a senior executive at "one of America's leading online services," said he ended up spending far more money on the venture than expected but declined to specify the amount.
Officials from Google were not immediately available for comment on the new adult search engine whose name and home page bear a striking resemblance to those of Google.
"We don't have any relationship with Google but we have put a link to their site on outs and so far we haven't heard from them," the anonymous founder said.
"We don't want to do anything is illegal -- it's a parody, it's funny and we're not out to confuse anybody so we hope they will take the joke in the spirit in which it was intended."
