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Open source projects aims
to bring more transparency to users.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has set Jan. 7 as the launch date for an
open-source search project 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.
The idea is to challenge the established players by offering a search
service that is more transparent to end users, meaning they can see how
search results are arrived at. Wales has described Yahoo and Google as
opaque services that don't explain how results are arrived at. Wales has
started to invite a handful of people to test an early version of the
search platform, which will be publicly launched on Jan. 7, he wrote in
an email to the Wikia mailing list Monday.
The search tool will take time to evolve, and the initial service won't
match the capabilities of the leading search engines. Contributors will
have to develop the search platform over time, in a similar way that
Wikipedia took time to get enough entries to be useful.
The search project is part of Wales' for-profit company, Wikia Inc.,
which offers a software platform that anyone can use to build wikis. In
a similar way, the Wikia Project will allow other people to build their
own search engines.
Wikia Inc. was started in 2004
and has received investment money from Amazon.com and Bessemer Venture
Partners.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/12/24/Wikia-search-project-to-launch-Jan-7_1.html
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