• Reuters, Friday, March 9, 2007 10:30 AM

A new Reuters report divulges more information on Jimmy Wales' collaborative search engine Wikia. The former futures trader, who founded the popular nonprofit encyclopedia Wikipedia, has repeatedly said he plans to go after Google with his latest wiki-based project.

At a news conference in Tokyo, Wales said his short-term goal was to steal as much as 5% of the Internet search market, but he declined to give any earnings goals. The company has received $4 million in funding from "angel investors," as well as a "very large investment" from Amazon Inc, according to the report.

A huge proponent of free sharing technology--everything about the search engine will be open to public scrutiny--Wales believes Web users can work together to eliminate search engine Spam and make natural results more accurate.

Wikia, founded in 2004, now has more than 30 staff members. The company also hosts group publishing on a wide variety of topics, giving tools away for free in exchange for linking to Wikia.com, the ad-supported search engine. Using the same root software as Wikipedia, Wales said Wikia might eventually carry more articles than its counterpart.

Read the whole story at Reuters »