The BBC reports that Google have apparently adopted some of the thinking behind WikiaSearch (my words not theirs).

It doesn't look like Jimbo is going to get his personal jet after all. Shame.

What next - a Microsoft conquering Wikia-based operating system?

Maybe Apple will start a search engine too?

The Phoenician Trireme looked like an innovation too, but the "thinking behind" the warship was best summed up by the shackles restraining the rowers at their oars.

Jimbo can't complain - after all if it wasn't for big companies stealing other people's ideas (hello Microsoft) you wouldn't have modern capitalism.

No, we'd have a verson of capitalism which works even better. A company saves very little (by comparison to what it spends in scaling and marketing) in taking the ideas of its little employees for unfair sums, and stealing from patent-holders who can't afford to defend. And the price for that theft is scotching innovation, since people stolen from enough times, eventually turn to something else where they can profit. If the big companies paid even reasonable bonuses and IP-license frees, and patent-IP terms extended for reasonable times by comparison with copyright-IP terms, instead of the way it is now (20% of it or less), it would be a different world.

We'd probably all have 200-year life expectancies, flying cars, and hotdog stands on the moon. Wheeeeeeee......


(I love these new smilies. Gunna use a new one on every mess till they're done).

you do have a rather interesting point.