LXer: Wikia Search issues community-based challenge to Google and Yahoo
 

Published at LXer:

Yesterday brought the alpha release of Wikia Search, a new engine built on free software and free culture values. For Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales, the release is a milestone in the realization of a long-held dream. However, as he tells Linux.com, Wikia Search is still a couple of years from maturity, with many of the details still to work out. "Philosophically, I'm a big supporter of free software," says Wales. "I've been interested in a streamlined, transparent search engine for a long time." Not only are free software technologies powering Wikia Search -- including Grub, the distributed Web crawler that Wikia bought last summer and whose code it immediately released -- but Wales is determined that "at every point where we find that there's an editorial decision to be made, we want to push that decision outside the company and into the community."

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