Well written, interesting interview by Paul Marks with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. Extract relating to WikiaSearch (see also this post from January):
Why are you developing a search engine?
Transparency is what I'm really after, the idea that we can go in and see exactly how web pages are being ranked. We need to have a public debate about it. We just don't know if there is any dishonesty or strange incentives in today's algorithms that rank searches. Since news of this venture broke (see search.wikia.com) we have been contacted by more than one second-tier company that develops search engines. They recognise that acting individually they are going to have a hard time catching up with Google, because Google has so much money and so many great people.
What's your plan for search?
It's too early for specifics, but one thing that has worked is an alliance in which people contribute to a free software project. We saw this succeed with Apache, the open-source webserver. Apache was a tiny group of volunteers, yet the vast majority of its code has come from companies who paid people to work on it. It's essentially an industrial consortium that has been able to fend off Microsoft's closed-source webserver. So it makes sense for second-tier search companies who are falling behind Google to contribute to a free search software project that will make us equal to Google in terms of search quality.
Comments