Not so long ago, I heard a senior internet executive expressing bemusement over the fact that Google had so notably failed to offer any financial support to the cash-starved Wikimedia Foundation, the not-for-profit that runs Wikipedia.
After all, there is a clear symbiosis here. The majority of Wikipedia’s traffic comes from search engines (60-70 per cent was the estimate I was given by Jimmy Wales recently.)
Likewise, Google benefits tremendously from the existence of a massive source of free reference material online. Indeed, many internet searches are started with the aim of finding an article on Wikipedia.
So the uneasy relationship between these two internet giants has always looked a little odd. There was Wales’ failed attempt to launch a wiki-search service through a separate private company that he controls, and Google’s own less-than-successful launch of Knol as a way to build a user-generated knowledge repository of its own.
That makes today’s news of Google’s first-ever donation to Wikimedia a significant moment. The $2m is small for Google but represents around 20 per cent of the foundation’s annual operating budget.
Equally significant is the very public love-in this has provoked, with Wales claiming the donation had cemented “the long-time alignment and friendship between Google and Wikimedia.”
That sounds exactly like the sort of diplomatic language nation-states use when they have just signed a truce. But like nation-states, there is no reason that the powers that dominate the internet will always see their interests as aligning so neatly.
