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Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales's for-profit search engine, Wikia Search, will go into a public beta on January 7, according to reports. (Good luck emailing Wales for access to the private beta going on now — he doesn't even answer messages from Bono.) The site — we hear it looks a lot like Facebook — will face competition from Google's Knol. It's also likely to be mentioned in the same breath as Jason Calacanis's people-powered search engine, Mahalo. Which means a lot of heavy breathing will be forthcoming from L.A.