Wikipedia founder scouting for R&D alliance in India

By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 16 December 2008, 23:47 IST   |    1 Comments
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Bangalore: To take on the giant search engines like Google and Yahoo, Wikipedia founder James Wales has launched Wikia search and the company scouts for R&D alliance in India. "When I look at Google and Yahoo today, I realize that search is becoming a commodity," said Wales. Launched at a time when Google and Yahoo are contemplating on improvement of their features for retaining a good position in the Internet search market, the new search option, which is in its early stage plans for certain added features which will allow users to be more participative. For instance, Wikia will facilitate a toolbar which allows user to contribute to the project even when not running a search query. "Search is currently very secretive, and companies such as Google having their own editorial teams checking and monitoring the content. We are in the early stages of design, but the idea is to allow users to make changes through an algorithm, which is public," said Wales, reported Economic Times. By allowing users and communities to have some stake in the way search will throw results, the company founder is hoping to introduce another disruption in the search business. "We have still a long way to go in terms of collaboration amongst communities called mini Wikis, but video for instance offers a great opportunity. Video is where text was when this whole thing happened in 1999," said Wales. However, unlike Wikipedia, Wikia search will not be a non-profit organization.