Wikia Search wants to take down the Google giant with a freely licensed (open source) search engine.

Since Google is now a $200 Billion company, it’s easy to assume that they’re going to be a bit guarded with regard to their search technology; as it is, after all, the driving force behind most of those billions.

However, Wikia Search feels that by putting users in control, they can create a search engine that works faster, is more accurate, and is more informative.

How is it going to do this?

By using the power of a community of users acting together in an open, transparent, and public way.

Their belief is that “search is a fundamental part of the infrastructure of the Internet, and that it can and should therefore be done in an open, objective, accountable way”.

Though it’s currently only an Alpha release (meaning the results are pretty bad because there is no user feedback data), as that data starts to roll in, expect the results to get better at an impressively quick pace. (At least that’s the hope.)

It’s definitely an interesting project, and I hope it’s successful too, because if it can do for search what Wikipedia did for the encyclopedia, then Google definitely needs to keep an eye on this David.

[Wikia Search]