Wikipedia's Wales takes a shot at Google

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has announced a new project called Wikiasari

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is planning to launch a new community-based search engine early in 2007.

The new project is called Wikiasari, a combination of 'wiki', meaning 'quick' in Hawaiian, and 'asari', meaning 'rummaging search' in Japanese.

Wikiasari will be run by Wikia Inc, the for-profit company owned by Wales that provides the technology behind the not-for-profit Wikipedia free encyclopaedia.

The project will aim to capture the energy and enthusiasm of a Wikipedia-style community to enhance search results.

"Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap. Try searching for the term 'Tampa hotels', for example, and you will not get any useful results," Wales told The Times.

In an interview with the New York Times, Wales, a former Wall Street futures trader, pointed to his pedigree on Wikipedia as a community-site developer.

"The one thing that I know how to do is build communities," he said, adding that Wikiasari will aim to build up groups of people who discuss the results generated by searches to filter out spam sites and hone precision.

Wales said that volunteers would be incentivised by an environment that makes doing the work "fun".

• Social networking tops 2006 search rankings
• Time lauds user-generated content
• China lifts block on Wikipedia
• Hackers use Wikipedia to spread malware