Wales kills off Wikia Search

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 1 Apr 2009 at 08:23

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has announced that he's closing the doors on Wikia Search, his answer to the "secretive" search practicies of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

"While I personally believe in the opportunity for free software to make serious inroads into the search space, our project, Wikia Search, has not been enjoying the kind of success that we had hoped," Wales writes on his blog.

"In a different economy, we would continue to fund Wikia Search indefinitely. It's something I care about deeply. I will return again and again in my career to search, either as an investor, a contributor, a donor, or a cheerleader."

The closure comes just a year after the site launched amidst much fanfare. Wikia Search allowed its users to rank the search results, and add comments and articles, the idea being that the wisdom of the crowd would help remove the idea of editorial bias in search.

Indeed, speaking to PC Pro a month after the search engine's launch, Wales described it "as much a political statement as anything else". It now seems the message has run its course.