Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) built a better product, and now the world's merchants are shoving money in its pockets as fast as they can. This hasn't escaped the attention of Jimmy Wales, founder of the astonishingly successful, volunteer-created Wikipedia. He has been kicking around the idea of a wiki-developed search engine for several years. Yesterday in a Tokyo news conference, he reiterated his intention to pursue the search market through his for-profit spinoff company, Wikia Inc.

While Google is using their head-start and the cash infusion from their IPO to race into new web-based technologies ahead of other massively-funded competitors Microsoft and Yahoo, Wikia could be a different kind of competitor. Think mercenaries vs. zealots.

Certainly Wales will have no trouble finding investors to fund such a project. In fact, he may already all he needs -- Amazon has already dumped a load of cash on his doorstep, and other investors have sent $4 million his way. Although Wikipedia operates as a not-for-profit organization, investors drool when they dream of the dollar value of the site, the most often visited as a result of a Google search. The traffic to Wikipedia has grown by 680% in the past two years.

Wales has shown he knows how to organize large groups of volunteers to develop open source media. While this might be a long shot, who would have bet on a horse named Google in 1998? Time will tell if the wiki hive-mind can create something better than the highly-paid minds of the Google empire. Empires have fallen before in the face of hoards all focused on a single purpose.