[Search-l] Bloomberg News - Wikia plans editable Web search engine

[Seth Finkelstein]

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

Wikia plans editable Web search engine
By Jonathan Thaw, Bloomberg News
Article Last Updated: 03/10/2007 06:28:24 AM PST

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."

By enlisting programmers and users around the world, Wikia is taking a
different approach than Mountain View-based Google and Sunnyvale-based
Yahoo, owners of the two most-popular search engines, which keep much
of their software code secret. Wikia is hoping the success of
Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that users edit themselves,
can be extended to the $7 billion U.S. Internet-search market.

"We think it's the sort of thing that shouldn't be controlled by one
company or one group of companies," Penchina said.

Wikia users will collaborate to build an index of Web sites that
anyone can edit. They also will be able to fix search results if they
don't give useful information, he said.

The site will probably include some advertising, Penchina
said. U.S. companies spent $6.95 billion on Internet-search ads in
2006, a 35 percent rise from the year before, according to Merrill
Lynch & Co.

Penchina was named CEO of Wikia in June after spending eight years at
online auctioneer eBay Inc. of San Jose.

Wikia, which has 33 employees, is funded by investors such as the
online retailer Amazon.com Inc., Netscape Communications
Inc. co-founder Marc Andreessen and venture-capital firm Bessemer
Venture Partners.

-- 
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  http://sethf.com/
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php