Wikipedia: Wikia Inc to wipe Google and Yahoo into dust on search?

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 09 March 2007 20:19

Home IT

Has Jimmy Wales gone mad? He thinks that Wikia Inc, the company that owns Wikipedia, can develop a search engine to beat Google and Yahoo, using a community based approach with the announcement coming in the midst of the Essjay controversy.

Although there were unofficial rumors that Wikia, the company owned by Jimmy Wales and the company behind Wikipedia, would launch a search engine to compete with Google and Yahoo, today’s formal, official announcement sees the rumor confirmed as fact.

Wales believes there is no great secret to search engine technology and is quoted by Daily Tech as saying that “The idea that Google has some edge because they've got super-duper rocket scientists may be a little antiquated now”.

Of course the knowledge that Microsoft and every other search company has failed to best Google doesn’t seem to worry Wales, which must be partly because of the tremendous success Wikipedia has enjoyed as a top web destination for information, even though that information has at times been found to be wildly inaccurate, requiring correction, and to be administered by at least one person who had falsified their credentials, namely the now fired EssJay (Ryan Jordan), who this week finds himself in the ‘I’m fired club’ along with NASA’s former astronaut, Capt. Lisa Nowak.

Wales is hoping that the open, community based approach that has worked so well for Wikipedia, despite accuracy hiccups, can power the upcoming Wikia search engine with the same efficiency and rapidly deliver a quality search experience. 

Wales says he wants 5% of the global search engine market, but has not as yet specified a timeframe for when he expects to achieve this goal.

Wales says that Wikia has received US $4m from investors along with a ‘very large investment’ from Amazon.com, although the value of that investment remains undisclosed.

So, has Jimmy Wales gone mad? Is this all a massive distraction from Essjaygate? Whatever the truth behind the situation, Wales’ reputation rests on the undeniable ongoing success of Wikipedia, with its Teflon ability to stop the Wikipedia scandals from sticking, or at least seemingly so.

If Wales is able to create a solid search engine through the community effort, it will certainly be a great achievement. But unless it can quickly start delivering the kind of accurate and fast results Google is famous for, and which Microsoft is still trying to match despite years of research and massive amounts of money, it’s hard to see it gaining any traction.

Well, Wales and Wikia wish to dominate the wondrous world of searching for information on the World Wide Web. With a $4m injection, which hardly seems enough, we’ll just have to wait and see how it all works out, and whether Wikia search makes us all go ‘wow’… or not.