Wikipedia Plans to Rival Google?

[Lithium]

http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN272470320070727?feedType=RSS

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said on Friday he is putting the building blocks in place for a community-developed Web search service that would rival search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

Wales told a conference of software developers in Portland, Oregon, that his commercial start-up, Wikia, has acquired Grub, a pioneering Web crawler that will enable Wikia's forthcoming search service to scour the Web to index relevant sites.

"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," said Wales, chairman of San Mateo, California-based Wikia. "I could be wrong about this, but it seems like a likely outcome."

Wikia -- which has helped groups set up thousands of Wikipedia-style sites on topics ranging from popular TV shows to specialist health or travel -- plans to develop an "open source" Web search service with the help of volunteers.

Wales founded the anyone-can-edit Wikipedia encyclopedia, a noncommercial project that is one of the Web's most popular sites. He also co-founded the Wikia ad-supported network of self-edited wiki sites. However, the two organizations have no formal ties.

The new Wikia search service will combine computer-driven algorithms and human-assisted editing when the company launches a public version of the search site toward the end of 2007, Wales said in a phone interview.

Human editors would help untangle terms with multiple meanings, such as palm, which can refer to location like Palm Beach, or generic topics like trees or handheld computers.

Search results are generated via another open-source software project called Lucerne. Wales said he is looking at options to enhance Lucerne, but would not detail his plans.

Grub was originally an open source project that was freely available to software makers to enhance as long as they shared any improvements they made. Wikia has acquired Grub from LookSmart Ltd., which had halted work on the project

Open source serach engine? Just found it interesting.

 

[-NC-]

Wales said he is looking at options to enhance Lucerne

lol, the first thing he should do it learn its name, I think he means LUCENE.

I wonder if wikipedia would drop off the top of the google SERPs if they launched a rival service....

 

[Peter]

This isn't exactly anything new to be honest, that guy has been planning and working on this for at least a year (possibly longer) and it has not been much of a secret.

Here is an article published ;ast year regarding it:-

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/23/wikipedia-to-launch-searchengine-exclusive-screenshot/

 

[IAmAllanShore]

I wonder if wikipedia would drop off the top of the google SERPs if they launched a rival service....

They aren't quite that blatant with the censorship:
http://www.google.com/search?q=micr...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

And wikipedia has been slowly falling down in the SERP for some time - not just in response to this or related stories.

-Allan

 

[jmcc]

It looks impressive to those outside the sharp end of the search engine business. However the reality of running an active search engine are somewhat different. The index has to be kept clean and up to date. The Grub thing is a joke because the backend processing still has to be done and it is that aspect that makes Google different. Blindly spidering all links is only competing with Google. Building a web crawler is easy. What they seem to have got from Looksmart is the Grub thing and a deal to use Looksmart's advertising on their sites.

Regards...jmcc

 

[dnz32kfresh]

I think this sounds like wikipedia is trying to expand into something they aren't going to be able to deliver...

 

[Domaingenius]

This project is not a problem for google. Search business is very big and complex because the size of data you need to work and because is very dificult do find a good way to work with a lots of informaton and google is good on this... The wikipedia project is a very good project and i think that just need some ads on.... I read something about search engine Jimmy Wales project and i don't see potencial...Perhaps google decide to make a new free eciclopedia and its the end of wikipedia.com :sold:

 

[DNProperty.com]

Have you noticed Wikipedia is usually listed on the first page of Google search results for many niches....This may change if there is any true competition between the two..

 

[DoctorZarkov]

More competition is good for search engine users. I won't say it doesn't have a chance, but I want to see it in action before I comment further.

 

[jmcc]

The more I think and read about it, the more it seems to be just hype and vapourware. I'm not sure if these guys even have the first clue about running a full web crawl or even a full TLD crawl for a real search engine index.

The Grub thing sounds ridiculous. It is a particularly half-assed idea which really doesn't take into consideration the reality of the web. Grub is one of the "shoot on sight" user agents that many webmasters ban. It doesn't apparently respect robots.txt. It is also software from at least (in web time) a generation or more ago.

They don't seem to have much practical knowledge of the sheer hard work that is necssary for the quality control aspect of building a search engine index.

Still it might be interesting to see their approach to search. However I don't think that it will be a Google Killer for some time yet.

Regards...jmcc

 

[labrocca]

If Wikipedia does do ok Google would just buy it for $500 million.

 

[Smiler]

Wikipedia is awesome. I read sometime ago that wikipedia is one of the few companies that can rival google. Wikipedia got almost all the answer for any questions. But people can edit the contents and therefore some info might get altered.

 

[Peter]

Wikipedia is awesome. I read sometime ago that wikipedia is one of the few companies that can rival google. Wikipedia got almost all the answer for any questions. But people can edit the contents and therefore some info might get altered.

They have come under a fair bit of criticism (and Jimmy Wales from what I remember agrees somewhat with it).

1 example of a major blunder they had a while back was that they did not check the credentials of someone they made an editor. He claimed he had a PhD in Religion and that he was a professor at a private university. In reality he was a 24 year old student who used books to try and verify information.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6423659.stm

This is 1 sort of thing they will have to watch 100% with any search engine that they produce that allows visitors to change the results etc. If someone is a competitor of someone else it is obvious they will try and knock them from the search engines so that they gain more customers themselves.

 

[Jeffrey]

This is an uphill climb for them if they're really serious of competing against Google. Yahoo had some feelers of being sold to another company. Can't topple Google.

 

[RogueWriter]

Frankly, whenever I want information, I go to wikipedia instead of a google search. Google should stop with the "more is better" spiel, and take a cue from wikipedia, because wikipedia is what google started out to be: a resource where results were actually relevant to the search with unique, end-user content.

 

[DropLister]

I don't think they can handle the adbuse that will come with such a search engine.

 

[bizwiz]

Wikipedia is way cool but I think they will still have a long way to go if they plan to rival google.

 

[jmcc]

As I work with building search engine indexes, I remain utterly cynical about Wikia and whether it will be a Google Killer. I don't think that the people in Wikia even consider themselves to be such but it is a great sound bite.

Regards...jmcc

 

[nuDy]

I wish them a good luck! Competitions between services is always beneficial to the users, so in all cases it is good

 

[Ronald Regging]

Wikipedia already has a rival on it's home front with Citizendium. I'm not sure how successful they'll be, but the owner is purported to be one of the original co-founders of Wikipedia and vows to ensure that all editors use their real names, go through credential verification, and that experts in the field will be asked to review the articles for accuracy. Basically they'll do everything that Wikipedia currently does, but better...

Now with talk of Wikia... It seems that maybe they're focus should be on strengthening the already existing services that they have, rather than branching out into a new area that someone else is already doing better. They may find themselves failing miserably at the search engine game, then when they come back to Wikipedia, finding themselves being nudged out on that front as well...