Given the attention it received when it was launched (including from us), the demise of Wikia Search should not go unnoted.

This was the attempt by Jimmy Wales (of Wikipedia fame) to bring a more transparent crowd-sourced approach to internet search. Wales’ complaint was that the “black boxes” of the big search engines are undesirable in the long term: as people come to depend more on search, they deserve a chance to look under the covers at how results are arrived at, and to help influence the rankings.

To be fair, Wales always warned that it would take a long time for Wikia Search to generate enough of a following to yield useful results. He’s decided to cut this experiment short after little more than a year.

At least for now, the black boxes have won.