Wikipedia is going to launch a new open source (wiki) search engine. The news first came to media on December 2006. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced that wiki search engine will be launched anytime in this year 2007.

The new Wiki search engine has already been launched but a recent article from San Jose Mercury News about this enhanced open-source wiki search engine by wikepedia founder caught everyone’s attention specially search engine optimizers. Many SEO criticize the idea since Wikia will be powered by a community of volunteers whereas Google is strictly run by algorithms.

According to the news source, a recent O’Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Jimmy Wales stated that Wikia acquired a new search technology to empower their search engine. This new technology is known as Grub. Grub is similar to the project SETI@home. If you are familiar with SETI, you might already guessed how the whole process with work.

As i already mentioned, Google search strategy exclusively depends on algorithms. As a result even if anyone pays million dollars they cannot be ranked #1 in Google SERP (Search Engine Result Page). But if a search engine is control by a community, the authenticity of the search results might not exist.

Although Wikipedia is always a controversial as a source for information, i will give them credit for keeping the content clean to this great extent and building the largest human based online encyclopedia. But when it comes to search engine, keeping the content clean and legitimate is foremost. So, my verdict is, Google will be the winner again in this search engine battle.