Jimmy Wales, founder of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, is planning a search engine in collaboration with online shopping firm Amazon.com. The search engine, called Wikiasari, could be a potential threat to search leaders, including Google, according to observers.
Wales said the search engine will be making use of the same user-based technology he perfected for Wikipedia. It will be developed by Wikia Inc. and is proposed to be launched in the first quarter of 2007.
Wikiasari is a combination of an Hawaiian word wiki, meaning quick, and a Japanese word asari, meaning rummaging.Wales had disclosed earlier he had a multi-million dollar funding from Amazon.com and cash infusion from a Silicon Valley group to finance several Wikia projects.
Wikipedia, is an open source online project to which thousands of surfers contribute to make it the online encyclopedia. Wales will make use of the same concept and free software to create the search engine. He contends that the popularity of Wikipedia and the transparency of the user-driven approach will make Wikiasari a success. There will be editorial inputs into the search results unlike Google’s or Yahoo’s results, which use certain machine-determined criteria and algorithms in displaying the results.
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