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Wikipedia founder challenges search giants
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has revealed that his new search project Wikia will be looking to challenge search giants Google and Yahoo following a recent acquisition.
Wikia has bought Grub, an open source platform which is driven by volunteer systems and therefore requires no web-crawling system from Wikia.
"If we can get good quality search results, I think it will really change the balance of power from the search companies back to the publishers," Mr Wales told a conference. "I could be wrong about this, but it seems like a likely outcome."
It was also revealed that the process by which search results are returned will probably incorporate some human-editing, similar to Wikipedia, which it is hoped would eliminate inaccurate search engine results.
IT Wire has suggested, however, that this human element could reduce the scope for successful search engine optimisation practices.
With $14 million (£7 million) of funding secured from backers including Amazon, an initial launch of the search engine is expected towards the end of the year.
Online Advertising news posted on 30 July 2007
