The Future of Search: Do You Ask Google or the Gaggle?

"It's hard to get the hotel site itself," he says.

A people-powered engine, on the other hand, would take into account the experiences of other users and steer you directly to the best-rated hotels in the area.

Battle of Philosophies: Democratic or Efficient?

Proponents of community-assisted search also point to the essentially undemocratic nature of the top three traditional portals: Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

Each company zealously guards its internal algorithms, and search results can be subject to internal editorial control. In an industry with huge profit margins – search is a multibillion-dollar industry – the lack of transparency can be unsettling, Mr. Wales argues.

"I like to make the analogy between search and journalism," he says. "Search in a certain sense is reporting on the world. Now, for most high-quality papers, there's a certain amount of transparency. You understand that advertising might influence the paper. But you also have a reporter's byline, for instance. Because search is so secretive, and so propriety, there are fewer checks and balances."

Furthermore, Wales continues, most users rarely stray from the top 10 results coughed up by their favorite search engine.

Since Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google respond to each query in similar ways, there remains a vast swath of relatively pristine Internet wilderness waiting to be discovered. A search tool that effectively utilized human input could open up the Web in a startling way, and allow users easy access to information that once languished on the 475th page of Google results.

Major obstacles remain before users will switch away from their current portal, says Brad Bostic, founder and CEO of ChaCha, a community search tool for mobile phones. Google, for instance, has already won the allegiance of a majority of Web users, and the company name is synonymous in mainstream culture with online search.

Bob Pack, of Sproose, likens the situation to the battle between Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

"Google is Coke," he says, "and Yahoo is Pepsi, and then you've got all the other flavors. Google's so well-branded."