Wikia to build a search engine

Founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, has announced big plans to build a search engine to take on heavyweights like Google and Yahoo!, says a Reuters report.

At a conference in Tokyo this week, Wales declared that Wikipedia's commercial counterpart, Wikia, plans to grab around 5 percent of the lucrative Internet search market.

Using the term 'black boxes' to describe search giants, Google and Yahoo! - as they rarely ever disclose their ranking algorithms, Wales argued that collaborative search technology can indeed change the power structure of the Internet.

Citing Wikipedia's example, Wales said users can actually work together to improve search engines, and that constant improvement would make search technology less susceptible to spam.

Founded in 2004, Wikia hosts group publishing sites on wide ranging topics. While it offers its tools for free to users, sites that are built using its resources are required to be linked to Wikia, which makes its money mainly through advertising.

And unlike Wikipedia, Wikia is typically geared towards niche audiences.

At the conference, Wales exuded confidence that using the same root software as Wikipedia, Wikia might eventually end up carrying more content than its popular counterpart.