[Search-l] hipmojo.com - "Jimmy Wales vs. Jason Calacanis"

[Jimmy Wales]

On Jul 3, 2007, at 2:14 PM, Seth Finkelstein wrote:
> Why, I thought, would someone with Wales' mythical stature risk it all
> to lose to Google in search?  And lose badly?

I always like to do whatever seems like it will be the most fun.

And if the mission were viewed as "beating Google" then I suppose I  
would lose, but I don't look at it that way at all, any more than the  
mission with Wikipedia was or is to "beat Britannica".

The difference between Mahalo and Wikia is pretty clear, isn't it?   
Mahalo is proprietary.  Wikia is free.  Or at least, I haven't heard  
Jason say that he's going to release either the software or data  
under a free license.  And so, for me, his project is just not that  
interesting.  I mean, I am sure it is lovely and all, but I really  
don't care about it.  I do wish he would stop spamming this list with  
irrelevancies, but of course he is welcome to contribute and welcome  
to use our work if it suits him.

As to the pace, I can only advise people to have a bit of patience!   
I may have "mythical stature" to some, but the truth is I always move  
slowly, think a lot, talk a lot, discuss a lot.  Review the history  
of Wikipedia... going allllll the way back.  There were first nearly  
2 years of "Nupedia" which ended up going nowhere but involved a lot  
of thoughtful people discussing how to build an encyclopedia, a lot  
of friendship building, community building, vision shaping, etc.

That's where we are today.  Hopefully we will have the first stab of  
something that sucks up by the end of the year.  And then we will  
start to revise, reconsider, rethink, delete, add, edit, change,  
until we start making something better and better over time.

Will it take 2 years? 5 years?  I dunno.  It will take however long  
it takes.  But it will be fun. :-)

At that meeting at Foo Camp, the one where I didn't say much, there  
was something that I did say.  I said that for me, this a political  
(small-p politics) mission in the same way that Wikipedia is a  
political mission.  Search is a part of the fundamental  
infrastructure of the Internet, and it should be free in the same way  
that much of the rest of the infrastructure is free.

Talk about competition always confuses or bores me.  I just don't  
think of the world in that way.  I think we should just build  
something cool and have a good time doing it.  If it becomes huge and  
important, great.  If someone else does something better, great.  As  
long as we do work we are proud of, and have a productive impact on  
the world, I'm happy.

One of my accidentally famous remarks is "I advise the world to relax  
a notch or two!"  I really mean it, too. :-)

In practical news, Jeremie is coming out to spend a week  
brainstorming with me in a couple of weeks.  We hope to put together  
some useful proposals for initial steps after that.

--Jimbo