Search is a job for computers. But if you're Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, there certainly seems to be room for a little human touch. Wales, who announced a wiki-powered search engine earlier this year, released screen shots of his new product, which he says is on track to revolutionize search.
Matthew Buckland, who covered Wales' announcement, at what he called a "gathering of 100 of some of South Africa's top geeks," said the early screenshots looked much like Facebook pages. That coincidence led Buckland to wonder if Wales was planning a social network that might rival Facebook.
For his part, Wales told the crowd the human-powered search engine was "Google's worst nightmare."
The search engine will eventually launch as part of Wikia, a for profit venture from Wales.
While many see search as a field that will always be dominated by Google, there has been no shortage of challengers. Among those seeking to wrestle the search crown from Google are Jason Calacanis, whose Mahalo search engine uses human guides to navigate the web.
