After Cuil, Wikia Search Now to Take on Google
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Google is popular, no doubt. However, apparently, Google’s popularity is causing other sites to start their engines in full swing, in their attempts to take over the search engine giant.
Last month, Cuil.com, the search engine started by ex-Google employees came into the lime-light by announcing that they indexed more web pages than Google and the search results were better than that of Google. Thousands flocked to the site, wanting to test out the features that the developers claimed. However, it didn’t take long for them to find out what the real deal was.
Now, it’s the turn of Wikia Search to try and take on the giant. Wikia is the brainchild of Jimmy Wales, the founder of, unarguably the largest collection of information in one place, Wikipedia. Wikia Search is a human powered search engine that was launched in Alpha back in January. We caught up with Mr. Wales back in January for WATShow, who was here for the IIT TechFest.
Speaking at the Global Brand Forum in Singapore, Mr. Wales said:
Right now, in the US in particular, we have a really strong concentration of the industry,” Wales said Thursday at the Global Brand Forum in Singapore. So a lot of people are really concerned about this… Do we really want all of our traffic, all of our editorial control of the Internet all being piped through one, two or three companies? I don’t think we do… I think we want to have a broader marketplace than that.
According to the statistics released by HitWise recently, Google holds over 70% market share in the US, followed closely by Yahoo and Microsoft. Wales hopes that Wikia Search will take over Google’s search domination. If his claims are to be believed, he sure has a mammoth task ahead of him. Going straight for the leader, instead of the others who are already lagging behind, is very courageous of the founder and this is certainly a bold statement by him.
How is Wikia Search different?
Wikia adds the ‘human’ element to search. Similar to Wikipedia, Wikia Search is an open-source and free search engine with social networking features. The search engine comprises of 3 components:
1. A web search engine
2. A social network
3. Mini articles
When a user makes a search, the search results are actually contained in these mini articles, which are nothing much smaller wiki pages. These mini articles are written by people, hence ‘people-powered’.
Will it be successful?
This particular approach takes ‘Search’ to a new level. People-powered search engines have been announced in the past too but have failed to make a mark in the market. Similarly, I fail to see the search engine going anywhere near Google’s search market. We have already seen Google’s approach towards their products. Microsoft too has spruced up their efforts to take on Google, by buying Powerset and are bringing a host of new features to their Live Search. True, semantic web-search is one-step ahead in terms of technologies and implementation. The commercial viability of semantic web may be here but I don’t see smaller search engines displacing Google’s position.
What do you think?
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A people-powered search engine that you might check out is one released by Me.dium.
Me.dium’s Social Search, which leverages the Yahoo! Search BOSS platform, provides an entirely new level of information on top of traditional search. Me.dium’s Social Search harnesses the activity of the crowds to let you find information that has relevance based on what people are actually surfing right now.
Me.dium’s technology lets the inherent activity of real people – not robotic crawlers – determine relevance. Me.dium’s Social Search results show what people are surfing and find interesting, right now. While other search engines base relevance on how content links across pages, Me.dium’s Social Search shows you the most popular news, reviews, pictures and videos that other people are actually looking at in relation to your search term. And as the activity of the people online changes, so do the search results.