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Wikipedia wants to take on Google

by on30 July 2007

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Thinks it can change the balance of power

 

The people behind the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia are putting together a search engine they think can rival search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

Speaking to a conference of software developers in Portland, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said he is putting the building blocks in place for a community-developed Web search service.

His commercial start-up, Wikia, has acquired Grub, a pioneering Web crawler that will enable Wikia's forthcoming search service to scour the Web to index relevant sites.

He wants to develop an "open source" Web search service with the help of volunteers. It will combine computer-driven algorithms and human-assisted editing when the company launches a public version of the search site toward the end of 2007.

Humans will be used to work out whether an entry, such as palm, which can refer to location like Palm Beach, or generic topics like trees or handheld computers.

More here.

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