Wikipedia to challenge Google, Yahoo.

Wikipedia founder says to challenge Google, Yahoo
Thu Mar 8, 2007 2:33PM ESTTOKYO (Reuters)

The online collaboration responsible for Wikipedia plans to build a search engine to rival those of Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., the founder of the popular Internet encyclopaedia said on Thursday.

Wikia Inc., the commercial counterpart to the non-profit Wikipedia, is aiming to take as much as 5 percent of the lucrative Internet search market, Jimmy Wales said at a news conference in Tokyo.

"The idea that Google has some edge because they've got super-duper rocket scientists may be a little antiquated now," he said.

Describing the two Internet firms as "black boxes" that won't disclose how they rank search results, Wales said collaborative search technology could transform the power structure of the Internet. More.

I love Wikipedia. It is the greatest thing in the Web 2.0 movement. If he could do this for search engines that would be great. Google is far superior in the ancillary wed programs they offer as opposed to Yahoo which is becoming more and more akin to MySpace with the silly news items they post on their front page.

I hear that AOL is working on technology to rival Yahoo finance. As much as I think AOL is a waste of bit stream hopefully they can rise from the ashes. The walled garden has been taken down like the curtain of Oz. Though in the far past it served a useful purpose it became quickly antiquated and superficial, keeping many from enjoying and utilizing the "real" power of the internet. With a farce like the AOL/Time Warner merger that almost anyone from the outside could have seen as destined to fail from day one, AOL has sunk about as low as it can. Warner never was able to really take advantage of the captured customer base in AOL for its entertainment stock as people began to become wise to the fact that there was something greater just beyond the thin veil of the AOL service.

If they can come back, good for them. It will have to be a content rich, technologically superior website. All they have now is a brand name that some people still might not scoff at and one of the most used instant messageing systems in America. I think that is the killer app that will raise them up, if only they can figure out how to integrate it into Web 2.0 with RSS feeds and all that jazz. It's there, some smart person has to come in and reorganize it.

Wikipedia has been a phenomenal sucess. User created content that is acurate and verifiable and policed by the network of contributors instead of a central core company. It is an organism that will continue to grow until it represents the collective knowledge of the entire internet using community. On some philosophical level, Wikipedia is a template for the internet. Spider out to outside content, links and search capability and this is the most powerful search tool ever.

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