Wikia Search to Close
Significant announcement by Jimmy Wales today:
In a different economy, we would continue to fund Wikia Search indefinitely. It’s something I care about deeply. I will return to again and again in my career to search, either as an investor, a contributor, a donor, or a cheerleader.
But for now, we will be closing the doors on the Wikia Search project (as of March 31, 2009) and will be re-directing and refocusing resources on other Wikia.com properties, especially on Wikianswers. Join me there to help provide freely licensed answers to all the world’s questions.
If you remember, Wikia Search was launched (press release) in January 2008 to be somewhat federated: using publicly crawled data via ISC.org, it was an example of “open general search index” that anyone could use. It was an interesting idea to share the crawling, and have competitive innovation on top of it.
At the time the Wikia press release heralded the cooperation:
“We believe that a completely open foundation must drive the future of search, following the same principles as the Internet and Web that it builds upon,” said Jeremie Miller, founder of Jabber and Wikia Search Architect. “Search is becoming one of the most powerful tools humankind has ever created—only transparency and open participation will protect these tools from abuse.”
For now, that experiment is over.
