Wikia Search Engine Alpha Launched Today

In some very exciting news for the Net community, Wikia Inc. today announced the launch of its new, user-centric Wikia Search Engine. The open-source, open-architectured search engine will be grown and managed by users like the organization's Wikipedia online encyclopedia. So today's launch is definitely an Alpha release. Read the Reuters wire story here. This is welcome and important news.

Wikia founder and Wikipedia patriarch Jimmy Wales put it this way in the company's press release:

"Today marks a significant, albeit initial step in our project to build a search engine. For the better part of the past year we've been working in the background to get to the stage we're at today -- an open-to-everyone alpha. We expect Wikia Search to be like fine wine inthat it will get better and better as time goes by and more and more people contribute. I've said before that Internet search must be more open and transparent and today marks a major milestone in our mission to make it just that."