When Jimmy Wales, the driving force behind the hugely successful Wikipedia, rolled out Wikia Search, a community-built search engine, 15 months ago, he said that his goal was to build a “Google-quality search engine” over time.
Chris O’Meara/AP Jimmy WalesOn Tuesday, Mr. Wales announced on his blog that he was pulling the plug on Wikia Search.
“Wikia Search, has not been enjoying the kind of success that we had hoped,” Mr. Wales wrote. He added: “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.”
The end of Wikia Search is only the latest reminder that building a search engine, let alone a Google killer, is far from easy. Dozens of companies have tried to offer alternatives to the big search engines but none has managed to attract a large audience. Indeed, over the years Google has increased the size of its user base, sometimes at the expense of the other large search engines like Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com, by a far larger amount than the total audience amassed by any search start-up.
The backing of Mr. Wales gave Wikia Search a healthy dose of credibility. But the project now joins other notable disappointments, like Cuil, which was started by a high-powered group of Google alumni. (My colleague Saul Hansell did a nice job of explaining the immense challenges faced by Cuil, and so many other search start-ups, as they tried to compete in the big leagues of search.)
That doesn’t mean all efforts to create new search engines have been for naught. Powerset, for instance, was able to sell itself to Microsoft. The reported price was $100 million.
That’s not the same as creating a rival to Google, but it’s a nice reward for trying.
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