Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales has commercial designs and that three-year-old for-profit ad-based Wikia Inc venture of his is aiming to build an open source search engine to take on Google. He wants 5% of the market according to reports out of Tokyo following a speech he gave.

Wales apparently thinks that search is an essential facility and shouldn't be a "secretive black box." He's also unimpressed with Google's "super-duper rocket scientists" legend and reckons it's only trading on its name.

He's hoping for a rough test version late this year and intends to give it away, which means web sites could be tuned for high rankings.