User-powered search results are
on their way

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has begun laying the foundation of a long-rumored community-powered search engine through Wikia technology, scaled to compete with giants Google and Yahoo.
According to CNN Money, Wales has acquired Grub, a "pioneering" web crawler that will allow his ad-supported commercial startup to scour the web in search of relevant sites.

"If we can get good quality search results, I think it will really change the balance of power from the search companies back to the publishers," said Wales at the developer conference OSCON in Portland, Oregon.

Banner and search advertiser LookSmart announced last week it has agreed to supply ads across Wikia's network as it expands upon this project. Advertising is currently provided by Google, a relationship that is expected to cease with the LookSmart transition.

Wikia, which has no formal ties to the non-commercial Wikipedia, allows groups to set up thousands of wikis on all sorts of topics. The next step is to develop open source search with the help of volunteers that will combine human-assisted editing with computer algorithms.

The service is set to launch near the end of 2007.