Wikiasari: new search engine from Wikipedia founder to take on Google

[Kristijntje]

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, is set to launch an internet search engine with amazon.com that he hopes will become a rival to Google and Yahoo!

Mr Wales has begun working on a search engine that exploits the same user-based technology as his open-access encyclopaedia, which was launched in 2003.

The project has been dubbed Wikiasari — a combination of wiki, the Hawaiian word for quick, and asari, which is Japanese for “rummaging search”.

Mr Wales told The Times that he was planning to develop a commercial version of the search engine through Wikia Inc, his for-profit company, with a provisional launch date in the first quarter of next year...

full article: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/articl...26,00.html

Search is part of the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. And, it is currently broken.

Why is it broken? It is broken for the same reason that proprietary software is always broken: lack of freedom, lack of community, lack of accountability, lack of transparency.

Here, we will change all that.

There have been some amazing projects in recent years which have matured now to the point that a new alternative is possible. Wikia is funding and supporting the development of something radically new.

Nutch and Lucene now provide the background infrastructure that we need to generate a new kind of search engine, which relies on human intelligence to do what algorithms cannot. Just as Wikipedia revolutionized how we think about knowledge and the encyclopedia, we have a chance now to revolutionize how we think about search.

http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

[jezebel]

History http://search.wikia.com/wiki/search:About

[mandy]

More details:

Wikia Inc., the San Mateo company co-founded by Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales, plans to challenge Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. with a search engine that lets users edit and fine-tune its results.

The goal for the project is to get 5 percent of the search market, Gil Penchina, chief executive officer of Wikia, said Thursday in an interview. He doesn't know when the service will be released.

"We're really trying to build a movement to make search free and open and transparent," Penchina said. "We have some servers up, and people are hacking away." ...

full article: http://www.insidebayarea.com/business/ci_5406665

Wikia targets Q4 unveiling of open-source search engine
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is targeting the fourth quarter of this year for the unveiling of an open-source search engine, he said in Tokyo...

But just how successful the search engine is will depend on more than just its accuracy. The search algorithm is the most closely guarded secret of companies like Google because it determines how high a particular site is ranked. If the algorithm is public then it would mean site owners could precisely tune their sites for high rankings and that's sure to attract the attention of spammers. Wales hopes a community effort will result in a black list of abusers to keep the results clean.

"If published algorithms make it too easy for spammers to game the system then we've got a real problem and my whole idea won't work," he said...

full article: http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.ph...1968336438

[mandy]

Update: SearchWikia buys a crawler:

Wikia, Inc., the for-profit company developing the open source search engine Search Wikia, has acquired Grub, a distributed crawler platform, from LookSmart.

Distributed crawler? Crawlers are software programs used by search engines to roam the web to discover pages that are then downloaded and indexed for searching. The crawlers operated by the major search engines are highly centralized, operating out of massive data centers, and are capable of finding and downloading millions of pages per minute.

Grub, by contrast, taps into the spare power of thousands of personal computers connected to the internet. Volunteers download the Grub client, and then allow it to operate as a background process on their computers—even as a screensaver...

full article: http://searchengineland.com/070727-123006.php

[jezebel]

Grub, by contrast, taps into the spare power of thousands of personal computers connected to the internet. Volunteers download the Grub client, and then allow it to operate as a background process on their computers—even as a screensaver...

No thanks.

[BellisimaJ.]

[quote author=jezebel link=topic=6432.msg62755#msg62755 date=1185657107]

Grub, by contrast, taps into the spare power of thousands of personal computers connected to the internet. Volunteers download the Grub client, and then allow it to operate as a background process on their computers—even as a screensaver...

No thanks.
[/quote]

DITTO!!!

[mandy]

Official launch date 7th January:

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has set Jan. 7 as the launch date for an open-source search project, dubbed Wikia Search, that eventually hopes to challenge Google and other established players.

The Wikia Search project has assembled the basic technologies for a search engine, including a search application, search algorithm and Web crawler. The project will allow technology enthusiasts to help filter sites and rank search results, using a community model akin to that of Wikipedia...

full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...01567.html

[accentnepal]

He is right - if spammers can game the system it will be a complete mess.
If they can't then Google is in deep caca.
And I doubt anybody will miss their arrogant a$$.


I'll click your site if you'll click mine.....

[mandy]

Update:

Wikia Search -- the open source search engine Wikia initially launched in January -- got a fresh start Tuesday. The refurbished version lets users edit, comment on and influence search results.

After performing a search query on any major search engine, a user typically gets a static results page -- the information it contains is determined largely by an algorithm. Wikia Search claims to add a human element to the process by allowing the customization of search results. Users can delete or hide results, rank items and add new results.

Based on their relevance to the query, Wikia Search users will be able to rate certain search results via a star-based system, which will gradually alter the order of listings on the page. ..

full article: http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/63257.html

Wikia search: http://re.search.wikia.com/index.html

[BellisimaJ.]

I don't like wikia search. I hate the idea that users can edit search results, which then impacts other users. And, you know that the deep pockets will find a multitude of ways to manipulate results in their favor.

I'll be sticking with Google and Go Search For.  tolensmiley: