Mahalo Inc

Trying to chip away at Google Inc.'s Web search empire, a new Santa Monica company is pitting human against machine. While Google has thousands of computers crunching complex algorithms to sift through the Web, Mahalo Inc. employs about 40 people to handcraft search results. The idea is to add a human touch to the highly automated process of helping people find what they're looking for online. "Google indexes the world's information," Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis said.