New search engine tailors its results for tablets

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The makers of Blekko believe they've built a great alternative to Google, but they're also realistic. They know their two-year-old Internet search engine won't ever supplant Google as the most popular place to search on laptop and desktop computers.

But Web surfing on tablet computers is a different matter, creating an opportunity that Blekko hopes to exploit with a new product called Izik - a search engine designed especially for Apple Inc's iPads and tablets running Google's Android software.

Izik, whose name is a riff on 17th-century scientist Isaac Newton, debuted on Friday with the release of free apps for the iPad and Android tablets.

To cater to the more visual format of tablets, Izik displays search results in rows of information capsules that can be easily scrolled with a swipe of a finger. Users scroll vertically to look at different categories related to a search request.