SearchFox offered personalized RSS feeds which were customized according to user preferences. The service analyzed feeds that a user read, and then recommended other feeds that may interest the reader.[1] The website also had a collaborate search engine, which visitors could use to share favorite links among friends and create personalized search indices for their own convenience.[2]
The privately held company, co-founded by James Gibbons, a Stanford University professor and former dean of the university's School of Engineering,[2] launched in September 2005, initially with a private beta and a small number of users. Upon launching, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch commented, "It's the first product I've seen that does a good job of prioritizing new content from feeds based on your historical reading behavior, as well as data gathered from the SearchFox community as a whole. I've only been using it for a couple of days, but I am already seeing how the prioritization works and I'm fairly happy with the decisions it is making."[1]