Gnoos, Ben Barren's Aussie blog search engine, launched today. The service allows you to search the entire blogosphere, or limit your search to Australian blogs. The design is neat and the results don't seem too bad at all.
The question is: what's the potential for these niche plays? If you're an Australian blogger, would rather you use an Aussie blog search, or just stick with Technorati? And what's to stop Technorati from spinning off a Gnoos rival (or in fact, regional versions for every country in the world)? Regional versions definitely work where there's a language barrier, but it seems like Technorati has that one figured out, too. On the other hand, perhaps an Aussie newspaper will get wise to blogging and snap up Gnoos to help with their new media efforts.
On a related topic, Ask.com just launched their blog search engine. Richard MacManus has a great review.
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