BBC expanding its search offerings

In an interview with the Guardian, Ashley Highfield of the BBC mentions their new push into search as alternative to U.S. based companies such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. “[A]s the market came to be dominated by US sites – the most popular of which is Google – there was value in investing licence fee payers’ money in a UK-centric search engine.” The BBC‘s current search offering uses Inktomi but optimizes results for a UK audience.