December 26, 2006
wikipedia to launch google rival
This is the big Web 2.0 story over the Christmas break: “Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, is set to launch an internet search engine with amazon.com that he hopes will become a rival to Google and Yahoo!…“
Lots of bloggers have been talking about it, but I like Dave Winer’s take on it the best:
Today Google’s profits come from ads, and that business gives them a reason to keep search weak. They want you to do a lot of searching to find what you’re looking for — and the stuff they find for you for free is competing with the stuff they make money on. So Google actually has a disincentive to make search better.
[Bonus Link from Fred Wilson:] Web 2.0 Is A Gift, Not A Threat, To VCs.
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I’m staying with Google for its all-inclusive crawling power, and recommending Wikiasari to people who need the benefit of SERPs backed by human editors.
The latter is still a huge market.