Building a search engine in Python

A new startup named Udacity is going to offer a free online programming course, titled CS 101: Building A Search Engine. The company has recently been formed by David Evans and Sebastian Thrun. This course will start in February 20, 2012 and last for seven weeks. And most importantly (at least for me or the readers of this blog), they are going to use Python as the programming language for this course.

What we can expect from the course? I am quoting few lines from an email I received this morning.

There is no expected background for students in CS101. By the end, you will have learned many important concepts in computer science and will be able to understand and create your own programs in a language called Python. You will also have built a search engine, which includes a web crawler that automatically collects content from the web, an efficient way to respond to queries, and a way to select the best page (similar to the way Google ranks pages).

Why don't give it a try?