Looks like Wikia lost the first round of what I called the Google-Wikipedia, Secrecy-Transparency war.

It is going to take more than just an open search platform to take on Google. Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced today that he is shutting down Wikia Search, the company’s experiment in creating better search results through crowdsourcing. Wikia Search attempted to port the Wikipedia model over to search by allowing anybody to modify results by including new links or moving natural results up the page. The initial launch last year was awful, but the experience improved over time. Still, it never really attracted anything more than a trickle of searchers. We are placing it in the deadpool.

Full Story: TechCrunch

(via StevenWalling)

Are there any other players in the “transparent search engine” field?