To the extent that it is interesting, I think it is in large part precisely because of the simplicity. It's doing the simplest thing that could possibly work (where work is defined as create an interesting image which in some sense is interpretable as the "essence" of the search), and surprisingly, even with such a simple approach it does work in many cases. See the results for Rolex (http://imgessence.com/browse/view/1543). It's very watch-y, even without any processing.

If you try to judge it more as art than tech, it's more interesting I think.

I agree that it needs to be tweaked a bit so the images align better. It doesnt handle portrait oriented images very well.

I think as programmers, sometimes we fail to realize that just because something is simple to us doesnt mean it is to everybody else. The reason I put this together is because whenever I saw these types of images posted somewhere, non-technical people would reply saying they wish they had a way to do it themselves.

There werent many technical challenges honestly. The lessons I learned were more about finding something people want and delivering it quickly with the minimum features. Now I can tweak and iterate and try the more challenging aspects.

I agree. it isn't.