But unlike Wikipedia, the search engine will be a commercial enterprise with a advertisement-based revenue model. However, the development of the search engine would utilise the same type of software and Wikipedia's network of followers that has contributed to the success of the free online encyclopaedia.

The provisional launch date for the new search engine is the first quarter of next year.

Earlier this year Wales, a 40-year-old former options trader, secured a multimillion-dollar funding from amazon.com and also from a group of Silicon Valley financiers for his Wikia Inc. In an interview with Times Online, Wales says that conventional search engine ranking algorithms lack the efficacy of human intervention.

Google searches are conducted using an algorithm that calculates how many other websites are linked to a certain site, which in turn gives the material found by the search a ranking.

"Essentially, if you consider one of the basic tasks of a search engine, it is to make a decision, 'this page is good, this page sucks'," says Wales, "Computers are notoriously bad at making such judgments, so algorithmic search has to go about it in a roundabout way." Wales expects his global army of dedicated Wikipedians to provide that judgement.

Although many consider Wikipedia to be a useful tool, Wales himself is one of many who insist that the web-based community encyclopaedia shouldn't be treated as an authoritative source as the quality and accuracy of Wikipedia content has been questioned on numerous occasions.

To compete with the other search engines, Wales will focus on making Wikipedia's neutral-point-of-view policy work for search rankings. If that happens, Google would have yet another challenger to deal with.