Google's search engine dominance is rarely in question, but folks like Wikipedia and Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales hope to change that, using open source search engines powered by people instead of mathematical algorithms. Experts consider the future of search, wondering if anything can wrest the search engine and Web services throne from Google.Jimmy Wales, co-founder or Wikipedia and Wikia last week, shared his view on why search engine startups bother to compete with
Google. The search engine has, by most accounts, 60 to 70 percent of the search market worldwide.
Game over, right? Not necessarily, according to Wales, who
told me the lack of a network effect
enables users to easily move from one search service to the next. This
is in contrast to other Web services, such as Facebook or MySpace,
whose social networks can bar people from leaving.
Once you've put your info in Facebook or MySpace, it's in there.
Despite the Google-fostered OpenSocial effort, it's still not practical
to move all of your data from one social network to the next.
Google users aren't encumbered by this; they are free to move about
from Web service to Web service. Wales told me that if a company can
offer search with augmented value, such as Wikia's peer-influenced
approach of letting users instead of machines influence search results,
that company might have a shot at luring some users from the
Googlezilla.
Read the rest of this article on eWEEK.com.
Online Media 
