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> Wikipedia guru squares up to Google

Richard Jones, iMagineer-in-Chief // 23 December 2006

As previously trailed, Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales has web search firmly in his sights. His bold ambition is to knock Google off its perch early in 2007. He hopes to bring the wiki global community concept together with bigtime backing from Amazon to establish a search engine that draws on the editing skills and value judgments of real, living and breathing, human beings.

Take on the mighty Google?

No doubt we'll see more of this - challengers to Google's dominance of the search market. This one is perhaps more interesting than most though, if only because of the names and the reputations involved.

Is Google vulnerable on search? You bet. Sure it has a lot going for it - absolutely massive market penetration and a brand profile that has crushed the usual suspects like MSN and Yahoo. It is ubiquitous. "To google" or the familiar cry of "just, google it" have transformed the site from a rather techie concept into a bona fide verb. All of that continues to generate huge inertia for its global following. And don't forget in this context we are talking about the "real" users out there who don't know a del.icio.us tag from an orangutan (and why should they?) For them Google = Coca Cola and it sure tastes sweet for what they need.

Google did not achieve this by accident. They got the best people and brains. They stuck to the script inexorably until they hit that crucial tipping point. They kept it simple - really simple. They wrote the book on making tiny micro-payments pay on a mammoth scale, even if those AdWords are now practically invisible (yet still f*ckin' annoying) to seasoned browsers.

They also hooked onto the importance of a philosophy to strengthen underline their credibility and integrity amongst the emerging online community. "Don't be evil". The jury may be out on whether that ethos now lies buried and breathless beneath billions of dollars and shareholder accountability but - hey - at least they have some serious cash to splash on interesting projects from the quirky (Writely) to the potentially seismic (YouTube). That alone bodes pretty well for Google Inc as an organisation, but for now let's concentrate on what they are famous for : web search.

The song stays the same

The fact is that the Google search engine is, well, looking a big haggard. It is that popular that everyone in town is buying it free drinks to grab a piece of the action. Manipulators, SEO freaks, web dumpers and those pesky people creating new sites - day in and day out - all crush down on that prized algorithm to the point where shining, platinum-plated quality is buried amongst the faintly depressing ring of "Results 1 - 10 of about 616,000,000..."

The penny is also going to drop pretty quickly that you don't need a whacking great google.com homepage to accommodate what can be reduced to this:

Indeed the vaguely techie users out there have been harnessing Google from the toolbar for donkey years. Google itself may be hastening that conclusion with its current promotion of the natty search bar on its homepage.

The mystery of "what Google does next" with its homepage is fascinating. It is to its great credit that it has not resorted to cluttering google.com with the usual nick nacks of news, ads and gimmicks.

Sometimes it works brilliantly. Sometimes it doesn't. For genuine research you really cannot beat the sophistication, speed and intelligence of Google. Lost that old article you printed off in 2004? Google has it. Decided you need to know more about genetics? Google will set you off in the right direction - or at the very least an interesting direction. (p.s. so will Wikipedia but let's not get too churlish too early in the article).

But as Jimmy Wales quite rightly points out "Try searching for the term ‘Tampa hotels’, for example, and you will not get any useful results". The cynic in me thinks "yes, that's what Expedia is for Jimmy and very soon 99% of the population will know that". But his general observation stands, even if the example is not well chosen - where is the quality control? Have we reached the point where quality and good old fashioned taste hinges - inevitably - on human intervention of some kind?

Search engine taste control

There is more debate to be had about the best way to deliver on that quality promise. There is a lot of faith in tagging out there, which certainly adds a degree of user personalisation and human "taste control". But do they genuinely solve the fog of billions of pages (and, soon, tags) colliding and jostling for space. Or are we simply developing a different form of clutter and hyperlinked exploration?

(Quick aside : this collision of the good, bad, ugly, useless, unique, niche etc is part of the unparalleled f*ckin' genius and power of the internet. It is A Good Thing. It is a separate question, though, how we can best draw on the collective intelligence, knowledge and insight that bubbles up alongside the HTML detritus out there. On occasions having 'no end in sight' (or site) point is great - pages fly by, hyperlinks are consumed and hours pass. Other times, well, you want an end point. And in many common contexts you want to get there immediately with top notch and focused results.

And it is not like it is hard to switch search engines. It isn't like switching bank accounts with forms to fill in. There are no new manuals to study to use a new search engine (well not most of them anyway). Once word gets around about another Bright Young Thing there is nothing to stop another tipping point happening with a new sensation - and pretty much overnight.

Hope no Google shareholders are having nightmares about that prospect. Whisper it - what Google do ain't that special and unique.

And what's this about Amazon?

Rumours abound on the role of Amazon? Wikia have been quick to deny that there will be any link up with Amazon stores or their own search engine A9. Maybe not immediately, but wouldn't it just be odd if things did not develop in that direction at some point? This project is being channelled through Wales' for-profit company Wiki Inc.

iMagineer Search Engine

The great irony of this story is that if you throw pretty much any search into Google these days the closest Wikipedia entry is right there on the first page of the results...

It's probably worth the iMagineers dusting off some of the great pretenders to Google's crown for an in-depth piece in early 2007. There IS going to be a startling new challenger - it's already overdue. Sure Google have a great position and they are diversifying into new areas by the day, but are any of these really Killer Apps? (OK, maybe YouTube and a couple of others make them halfway interesting but they don't say much about their dominance in search).

Rumours that the iMagineers have their own Google Killer on the drawing board have been grossly exaggerated ... perhaps.

> Times coverage

> BBC coverage

Bye

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