Today, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales launched Wikia Search in its first alpha release. The open source project is poised as a potential challenger to far less transparent search giant Google.  Wales describes Yahoo!Google as opaque, a tools that do not reveal how their results are determined and organized. and

"Wikia's search engine concept is that of trusted user feedback from a community of users acting together in an open, transparent, public way."

Wikia's users, technology enthusiasts, will be able help filter sites and rank search results, using a community model similar toWikipedia's. 

And, like Wikipedia, which grew more useful as more content was added and edited, this service will take time and community to fully evolve. The "About" page admits:

"Of course, before we start, we have no user feedback data. So the results are pretty bad. But we expect them to improve rapidly in coming weeks, so please bookmark the site and return often."

The project is based on Four Organizing Principle for the "future of Internet search":

1. Transparency - Openness in how the systems and algorithms operate, both in the form of open source licenses and open content + APIs.

2. Community - Everyone is able to contribute in some way (as individuals or entire organizations), strong social and community focus.

3. Quality - Significantly improve the relevancy and accuracy of search results and the searching experience.

4. Privacy - Must be protected, do not store or transmit any identifying data.