CNet News is reporting that some ex Google employees are working on a new social search engine.

The site is called Mechanical Zoo and is scheduled for a beta launch in May.

Mechanical Zoo is aiming to be an application ( rather than a regular web site ) that will allow people to search the knowledge in their social circle to find useful personal information and recommendations. Mechanical Zoo currently has 100 “alpha” users testing the search. The site will be a Yahoo Answers-type service, with more built-in knowledge about a person’s tastes and interests.

Mechanical Zoo cofounder Max Ventilla, a former business development manager at Google, says “We’ve developed an online social structure that lets users reach out to people they already know” for answers.”

Source: News.com