Wikipedia Abandons Wikia Search Engine

Despite being launched only 14 months ago, the Wikia search engine project has now been abandoned by Jimmy Wales, the founder of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, on account of the fact that the small engine could not measure up with giant Google. The project, which was officially shut down on Wednesday, was interrupted because it's main goal, that of breaking people's addiction to Google, was far from being achieved, and also on account of the fact that the engine did not have as many regular uses as its makers first envisioned.

“[...] While I personally believe in the opportunity for free software to make serious inroads into the search space, our project, Wikia Search, has not been enjoying the kind of success that we had hoped. In a different economy, we would continue to fund Wikia Search indefinitely,” Jimmy Wales said on his blog, in an entry dated March 31st, 2009.

“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. But for now, we will be closing the doors on the Wikia Search project (as of March 31, 2009) and will be re-directing and refocusing resources on other Wikia.com properties, especially on Wikianswers. Join me there to help provide freely licensed answers to all the world’s questions,” he added.

Despite the best efforts on the part of Wales and his team, the project enjoyed only limited success. While other parts of the Wikia project continuously expanded, the search engine was left behind, and found itself unable to compete with all-time ruler Google. Treading behind the Mountain View-based search giant is Yahoo!, the company that is a pioneer in everything related to the Internet, as well as Microsoft's LiveSearch.

According to Nielsen NetView, Wikia grew by more than 172 percent between February 2008 and February 2009, expanding from nearly 1.4 million users to roughly 3.8 million. However, while the growth in itself has been significant, it does not match the whooping 1382 percent increase in popularity that Twitter has experienced over the same period of time, growing from 0.45 million users to more than 7 million.