Wikipedia to give competetion to Search Giants

July 31st, 2007 by Annkur

Jimmy Wales, the founder of community driven encyclopaedia Wikipedia and its parent company Wikia, said last week that he is in the process of laying the foundations for a community-developed web search service designed to rival search engines from companies such as Google and Yahoo.

Wales told attendees at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention that the Wikia search service will combine computer-driven search algorithms and the much-needed human involvement that’s currently missing from the top search engines. He claims that the human editors would help to untangle search terms that have multiple meanings.
Visually, Search Wikia will have the standard search-engine interface. “The differences will be that at various points all along that search process, there’ll be opportunities for people to engage with the community and join and participate in the construction of the search results,” Wales said.

“Google will be much better off if search becomes ubiquitous and there are lots of players because that doesn’t threaten their dominance in the advertising market,” Wales said. “Google is much better off with lots of players and being the ad broker for everyone, because ad brokerage is a defensible business.”

Since Search Wikia’s announcement in December, an increasing number of organizations, such as search and online advertising player LookSmart, have expressed interest in the project, Wales said. In the coming months, Wikia will provide more details about third-party partnerships and support.

http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN272470320070727

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