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Google Donating Bandwidth and Servers to Wikipedia
Armstr0ng writes "According to Dirson's blog, Google plans to help Wikipedia by donating bandwidth and servers to handle part of their increasing load. In fact, there's an official page of Google's proposal to host some of the content of the Wikimedia projects."
1. Gmail
2. Gbrowser
3. Ghosting
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
It is now called Gwikipedia.
Google donating bandwidth for the better of the internet community. If only more internet or tech companies would show some dedication like this into improving the education for the masses over the internet for the people. Hats off to google again.
But others could do this, too? So maybe Wiki can limit the ability of others to do this, and give this ability exclusively to Google?
What I am trying to ascertain is what value can Wiki give google other than advert space, which is apparently not part of the current deal?
I've never been a fan on Wikipedia, its always seen as a rather frowned upon source of information (rightly so in some cases).
But with a publicly trading beamoth like Google supporting them, does this mean Wikipedia has the possibility to go mainstream?
I wonder what google is going to get out of the arrangement. The link says that it doens't mean Wikipedia will have to put ads on their site. It's always possible Google's just trying to do something nice ...but I'm a bit skeptical.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
"According to this post, Slashdot plans to help Wikipedia by using up bandwidth and adding to their increasing load."
Why do they allow anyone to edit that content? I could click edit and save changes to that page.
...when I heard about Google maps. I wondered how long it would take Google to start their own wiki, then I decided they wouldn't be likely to duplicate the efforts of Wikipedia. Didn't occur to me that they might do this instead. Cool.
As Google keeps expanding - At what point does Google turn from everybody's favorite company, to the next Microsoft?
Sounds like google may have the keys to one of the largest online information repositories to include in their new Gpedia.
It usually is a 10 minute process to login to Wikipedia and call up an edit page. Not to mention that this might help with all of the Slashdottings Wikipedia's servers have to survive;)
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Google is able to pull off new stuff while sticking to "do no evil" philosophy. And, what more, because of competition from Google, Yahoo has started offering better services (e.g. the Yahoo toolbar for firefox). So, good for the end user.
S
All joking aside. If this does pan out.. wow. Just wow.
Now let's sit back and hear all the conspiracy theories about how Google is slowly preparing for world domination. :-)
Now thanks to the sudden influx of /. users, the price of actually hosting the project jumped by about 300% and google runs screaming.
mattdev@server$ touch
cannot touch `/dev/genitals': Permission denied
Sounds like a winner to me!
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I would actually not mind Google ads on the bottom of Wikipedia pages if they're relevant. Let's say I'm reading about some scientific shit on there, and google suggests a few books on the bottom of the page. I migh just as well go ahead and buy them.
but this might be also to compete agains msn, which has a link to encarta articles when you do a search. This way google gets its own 'encarta'. But its really that bad, its good for everybody!
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
Currently, Wikipedia is relying on charitable donations in order to get its funding... but why don't they just add the Google AdSense code into their pages?
Even their own Advertising on Wikipedia policy page admits ads are going to happen someday. Wouldn't this be the best way for them to go?
To take over the world!!!
You heard it here first. Beware the mighty google.
First they control the means of searching the internet (google), then the means of communication (gmail), then they control the business of local businesses (gmaps), and now they controls the means of education (gwiki).
Once they start controlling the means of production (gfarm), its all over!
don't have to finish that sentence.
Yeah, linking it on /. is a great way to help out their "increasing bandwidth" problem
I stole this
You have been ASSIMILATED!
This is a bad idea. Wikipedia is so full of convoluted articles it isn't even funny. Don't get me wrong, there's some good information there, but a lot of articles have information in them that makes you go "WTF!" There is an article about where I live on there, and I noticed it is icorrect, so I edited it. Some guy, who seems to think to article is his baby changed it back. Whenever anyone changes it he changes it back, because he wrote it. According to his user page he also lives here, but he has no idea what the hell he's talking about. He also wrote and polices several other articles related to where I live, and they all present his convoluted and incorrect information. That is the problem with Wikipedia.
I guess Google changed its moto from "Do no evil!" to "Help the needy!"
I really like Wikipedia and hope it gets more atention with time, but there's just something wrong with this deal. I think the question to ask ourselves is what does Google get from this. Bandwidth is expensive, especially on such a high load site as Wikipedia so I'm taking this with care.
I bet $10 there _will_ be Google ads on wikipedia if the deal goes down. Google giving bandwidth for free doesn't sound right from the marketing perspective, even for Google.
Or maybe, just maybe, there is something bigger behind this. Will there be gPedia in the next months? This could go along with Googles web/dictionary search and the recently announced maps.
Live and see.
From Wikipedia's Google entry:
In February 2005, Google announced plans to offer hosting services to Wikipedia.
Seems like Google hasn't taken to kindly to Microsoft's recent launch of the new MSN Search. Last week they moved Google Local to the front page in an apparent effort to meet Microsoft's localization feature. This move looks to me like an attempt at meeting Microsoft's Encarta integration.
... it appears that Google does good. The only bad thing I can think of is their Google Groups 2 which should be sent into outer space and nuked.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
HOLY. Armageddon is upon us, a corporation doing something for the public good!!
Probably doing it just to make people like 'em... well, I already like them. But I think that people who don't like them will still be very cynical.
Maybe eventually they will be right in being cynical. But for now, it really seems like google is willing to help out the community, which is doubleplus good.
I think they're going to have a hard time trademarking "Ghosting"
Especially because Norton got there first.
What I've never understood is why google can make their search page so blazingly fast, but orkut is a joke in terms of bandwidth and load speed. Hopefully wikipedia will get the main google computers and not whatever the hell they run orkut on.
Dear Google,
;) - without heavy-handed corporate meddling. I hope you'll just let it purr along with minimal intervention and let it make you money. Better Google than MS, I say. And if it's really just a charity gesture, well, a big hellyeah and mucho goodwill to you all.
Could you guys be any cooler? Hey, I know I'm a geeky Google fanboy, you make me look smart at my job every day. I'm not pretending otherwise, let's get that straight. It's hard not to like a friend like that. And I know you've had PR issues with employee bloggers, but on balance you guys do more "good things" than just about any other Big Evil Internet Corporation around. Granted, the Gates Foundation gives a lot of money to worthy causes, but their patron takes our money and freedom with the other hand. Long term you probably want to make a buck off Wikipedia, and you're getting your foot in the door now. They ARE one of the best resources around, and it fits your strategy of being the answer to just about any question.
But strangely, I trust you guys not to screw it up, unlike some others (Micro*cough*) I can think of. I think you're crazy enough to let Wikipedia run under it's own editorial control - if you can call it that
Publicity. got them on /. didn't it?
The gutenberg project is another that is deserving of bandwidth and servers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
First get in good with all of us geeks and internet junkies. Then, once you cant imagine life without google (search, groups, gmail, maps, gpedia? ), they take it all hostage! When you go to google.com you will be greeted with "donate now" link (through some paypal-like service that google will start and most likely do better than paypal) and if one billion is not reached by next month in donations the sites go down for a month. and this happens every month... man, they're good...
Google's value to the customer is its ability to get good information to that customer. Anything that improves the general quality of information on the internet improves Google's value to the customer.
The cake is a pie
Classic moves from the dot.com playbook of 1999. Amazon perfected this strategy back when their stock was around $500 per share- they'd announce new categories of sales on a daily basis in the hopes that nobody would notice their P/E was over 1000:1.
Eventually that quit working. In a hurry.
If they ever do pr0n I've got a great name for them.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I would strongly advise Wikipedia to refuse any nondisclosure agreements, and carefully read the fine print on other agreements. The libraries that thought it was so cool to get their books indexed signed nondisclosure agreements. This could be embarrassing at some point down the line....
"We are moving to a Google that knows more about you." --Eric Schmidt, speaking to analysts yesterday, as quoted in the New York Times today
and great justice.
Does anyone realize the irony in posting that a certain website now has _more_ bandwith?? By posting this link on /. , Wikipedia now _really_ needs help from Google!!
On another note: **tin foil hat** Google will one day take over the world.
The new msn search engine searchs in Encarta
i wonder if they will help octopus-helmet-factory that is also one that is deserving of bandwidth and servers and also my little pony fansite that i work on is a good one too and dont forget about new yourk timse .com that is a good one and also I WONDER IF they will help me wipe my ass for me i needs it done
That is *not* a policy page. Look at the boldface phrases:
The text below is historical.
There are currently no plans for Advertising on Wikipedia.
And not in boldface:
This is a preliminary essay, intended to give you food for thought.
Google seems to understand that knowledge, and the dissemination of knowledge, is power.
If you can provide people the most efficient way of providing information important to them, people will deal with advertisements and other methods to generate revenue, as long as they are inobtrusive.
Wikipedia is a great source for many different types of general knowledge, and while it may not be the ultimate resource for obtaining information about a certain topic, it is a great place to start to get a general overview.
Maybe Google sees this as a great addition their search engine: when searching, a person is supplied with a brief description of the topic at hand and search results to further their research, perhaps grouped into categories. If Google can make themselves a living, breathing entity like Wikipedia has, with input from users, perhaps they can gain an edge over other search engines.
Wikipedia is a decent resource for information on Quantum Mechanics or other scientific information, but as far as political and historical information, forget it. Actually, the mainstream press even wrote about this during the 2004 US election. People should face up to it - there needs to be more than one wiki page out there for controversial people like Joseph Stalin, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and whatnot. The idea that there can be one supposedly "neutral" page has not worked out in practice. If you are of a conservative bent, I suggest a wiki like Wikinfo, if you are more left wing, I suggest somewhere like Infoshop's Open Wiki.
I find the Wikipedia's cabal commissar role over such things disturbing, and this sort of thing makes me feel even more so. Democratic Underground is testing a wiki, and perhaps Free Republic will follow. Let a thousand flowers bloom!
All in all, this is a great development.
Can't or won't?
Google has enough infrastructure to be the only DNS nameserver that you need, worldwide. Screw decentralized[1], they can have the entire DNS tree "in house" and you woudln't need to check 8 servers just to get to Yahoo's web page. They could handle all domain registration and maintenance.
I've been told "they're not ready for this yet".
Pity.
[1] you could still list yourself as secondary if you really wanted to take that kind of performance hit.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Since it seems that every fourth news story is about Google......and it used to seem that M$FT were the borg but I think there's a new assimilator in town. Wait till the Gmarketing strategy kicks in and they fill Wiki with ads and online stores start adding their own entries to the encyclopedia and get ranked.....keep generating those long revenue dollars!
Hey, you think your house is cool?
yes, I am glad someone is talking about this. THere is no doubt that there is a preponderance of rightwing opinion in the control of Wikipedia. This is no doubt the reason for Wikipedia's relatively high profile in the mass media.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Google is not shooting for Internet domination by buying up anything that's popular and works and becoming the next M$, are they?
Some aim to please, I aim to tease.
Wikipedia is open to anyone who wishes to contribute and gosh, it still works. Content is added constantly and crud is scrubbed off by people who care, sort of like a child growing. Professionally I'm embedded in the Microsoft camp (what's there to fix in the Apple environment after all? And Linux is too much fun -- I get distracted) but I never use Encarta, and I'm constantly referring to Wiki for business and pleasure.
I don't really worry about Microsoft and the water economy -- Carly's treatment of two fine old technology firms show even the biggest and best companies can fall in time. In the long view, the fifty-to-100 year view, what's going to remain in use?
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Given the reply speed of wikipedia servers I guess a lot of users just use Google's cache instead. Given the number of users it is probably more effective for them to help improve response times by hosting servers than to have to serve this extra load to their cache.
And the PR effect of this helps them too, of course.
Uhm...
It quit working?
I would say it only quit working from the standpoint that they reached their tipping point and, well, that's why they are still around today.
Try again next time buddy.
More info
Jimbo Wales meets with Sergey Brin and Larry Page
Jimbo Wales, Chair, Founder and life member of the Wikimedia Foundation met with Larry Brin, Co-Founder & President, Products of Google, and Sergey Brin, Co-Founder & President, Technology of Google in Stanford today to discuss hardware and bandwidth donations from Google to the foundation. According to Anthere, Vice-Chair, Contributing User Representative of the Wikimedia Foundation,
"It is currently proceeding, but details are not entirely worked out. We had a first proposal for which we gave feedback last week. Today, in Standford, Jimbo met with Sergei Brin and Larry Page, who were extremely enthousiastic about the whole project. The board has a meeting planned early march to try to finalize this a little bit more. Ant" [1]
Maveric149, one of the lead developers and most prolific of article contributers continued:
"I don't remember the specifics (ask Jimbo for those), but Google has at least tentatively agreed to give us access to a certain number of dual zeon servers at one or more of their data centers and with unlimited bandwidth. I've been told that there are no strings attached (meaning they don't expect us to do anything for then, such as having GoogleAds).- mav [2]
In short, this is wonderful news. I have helped with our grant applications in the past and, in addition to taking a lot of work, there is barely ever enough money to run what will shortly become one of the top 100 websites on the internet, and the only thing limiting Wikipedia's growth is hardware.
Tomorrow there will be a meeting in IRC to discuss our future grant applications; anyone wanting to hear more should keep glued to the Grants page and stop by http://irc.freenode.net/Wikipedia at 4PM UTC on Feb 10 (Sunday)
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
it quit working in the sense that the daily new business entrances were able to keep amazon's stock price inflated.
Donate unused bandwidth and deduct it from taxes at higher value that its really worth. Get good PR. Its win its win. Well unless you're the government getting screwed out of taxes.
This is simply a strategic move to compete with Microsoft and it's inclusion of Encarta in MSN Search...
Google is getting into robotic war machine business?
Being able to search nearly all of humanity's knowledge is extremely powerfull. Being able to help create and build the data infastructure that eventually much of the industrilised world will relay on gives each and every one of us intellectual omnipotence.
The fact that anyone with an internet connection now can harness this much power must really disturb the politicians and CEOs who relay on our mediocre education system and centralised media to keep the masses ignorant and those with some knowledge incapable of sharing it. It's difficult to sniff ssh connections on hacked wifi Access Points. It's impossable to regulate freenet, tor, or even most conventional p2p networks. Google and wikipedia offer even more robust and democratic services, but they unfortunatly are very centralised. Google has pledged to do no evil, but I can imagine that the leaders of many hierarchical entities, from Microsoft to the NSA, would love to just watch (much less control) the content of these forces of potential social transformation and enlightnment. If google and wikipedia form a stronger alliance and people begin to use and contribute more, I suspect that the service will risk being shut down if it doesn't sell out to survalience, censorship and marketing/advertising. Google and wikipedia stand out as nonpareil examples of all thats good on the net. They can help each other out, but lets be vigilent to ensure their and our freedom.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
This move makes perfect sense from a business perspective if you ask me.
/.. Google probably has a pretty good index already, and could conceivably get a database-dump. However, if Google is going to rely on these data in the future they probably want to give the Wikipedia developers an incentive to not change tings too much. At the same time, providing MSNBot with at 9.6k connection....
Google is coming up with a lot of products for different mobile agents, including cellphones. These devices cannot query Wikipedia easily, and neither does Google want them to. Why go to Wikipedia.org when Google will give you that result for you anyway? Mobile users are also used to paying for stuff, internet users in general are not.
Google would benefit in several ways:
1) Reliability. They will know Wikipedia's servers will be up and running 24/7. Even when the site is mentioned on
2) Better access to the data. I do not think that the people at Google are stupid enough to rip Wikipedia off and present the material as their own. However, having local access to the database would be a huge plus.
3) More users for both Wikipedia and Google. Wikipedia would receive a larger audience, Google would attract Wikipedia fans. This could be a powerful combination against MSN Search / Encarta.
4) Direct access to the database could also have other benefits. It may be possible to check the quality of 3rd party website by comparing notes, but this is just speculation on my part.
See, for example, the Creatures Wiki (blatent advertising, I admit :-). They have incorporated it into the layout. It works reasonably well. It's not a bad deal in terms of free supported hosting of wikis with no worries about bandwidth, backups or what have you.
Maybe it's because you're searching incorrectly - it's AD 1033 and a search on Google of "AD 1033" shows a huge amount of stuff related to the year. Google can't help you if you aren't smart enough to ask the right question.
This is the beginning of Google accumulating content it can work with, rather than just metadata. They could become as powerful a defender of open content as Microsoft is a defender of proprietary content. Go Google!
--
make install -not war
'Did you mean' spellcheck on Wikipedia.
Please.
If the content about Google is inaccurate than Google is free to post a correction, are they not? Is that not one of the big ooh, ahh features of Wikipedia? Second, consider the fact that it costs money for Google to file a lawsuit and what would be the point in agreeing to host content, hosting it, then deciding that you didn't like it and suing the creator over it? Chances are, Google would be laughed out of court.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
FunWithKnives opens a new tab directed to www.wikipedia.org.
FunWithKnives waits...
FunWithKnives puts tab in background and browses Slashdot for the three minutes it takes Wikipedia to load.
After that it's usually fine, but jeez :P
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
Does anyone share the growing feeling of concern and unease that I have about Google?
I thought the days of single online providers (Compuserve) was over but now it seems like Google wants to be the entire internet. They 'own' web searching (and therefore in the current state of affairs the web itself), they 'own' image searching and Usenet. Instead of loging onto the 'net it's becoming increasingly the case that you boot up Google instead.
Wikipedia looks like it could become the next major online success (and Google's actions kinda endorse this prediction) but instead of being happy with this state of affairs I'm wondering how long it will be before I only have one page in my 'sites to check daily' folder: Google.
Of course if you take a Capitalist kind of viewpoint this all looks very good for Google: it's taking over *because* it's so good. It's success is justifed - well done Google - no problem here.
My problem is that I see a rather nasty monopoly at the end of all this. If it is Google's intention to expand into every online nook it will not be a good thing for the internet as a whole. In fact a single critical set of servers seems to me to be exactly the opposite of what was intended. Aside from the already massive over-reliance on Google for both business and personal use, the ever increasing tempation for them to abuse their position as the gatekeepers of information in general and the damage done to the internet design philosphy as a whole, my major concern would be governmental interference*: let's face it, governments want control of people and Google's servers already give a quite stunning amount of insight into what is going through our collective heads. Even if you believe that Google (the company) is incorruptible, a single centre of such power would be viewed with great envy by a shit load of people who are.
Remember that feeling when the 'net was still young - you had it because there was no single dominant hierarchy in control. Already that feeling is fading fast - don't let it disappear altogether. The associative information held on Google is already too bloody dangerous to be kept a secret. Open it up guys - then I'll believe how much you care.
* There is a theory that this has already happened!
Wikipedia, while nice and all, is NOT a reliable source of information, and I don't think Google should associate itself with it.
What if school children start using Wikipedia?
They may try to use a defaced article as fact. I, for one, would not allow any of my students to cite Wikipedia for good reason.
Is Wikipedia the problem? Or are people the problem?
Wikipedia would be one place that could really benefit from a rich client treatment like gmail or maps.google.com. If you could lower the bar substantially on how easy it is to edit and manage changes it could grow much more quickly.
There have been so many times that I have wanted to contribute to a page, but just was to lazy to load the edit page, etc..
Really, wikipedia could do this themselves. I see something like an edit tool, click the tool, click where in the text you want to edit the article, a text box pops open with x lines before and after the place were you clicked and you can type immediately, click outside of the text box and it dissapears and your changes are added (without any page reloads). I can think of much more sophisticated tools (moving sections around, etc) but just this ability would be a huge step IMO.
-ashot
Stock price does not reflect whether or not a business is successful, or even going to be successful. It's not even a good indicator as to the health of a business.
I suggest you educate yourself on how business works before spouting off eccentric bullshit.
google is taking over the world, again. first they add the maps this week and now this..
Guys, it's all a scam. They're trying to win the public heart while at the same time working towards world domination. News at eleven!
... and as long as I am at it, I have been wondering for years (especially after reading this), where is Google Hosting?
They have the infrastructure for cheap space and bandwidth, why not use it to provide a truly capable hosting solution, with the ability to install whatever you want, etc. I'm sure they could figure out some way to do that without security concerns along with a host of other things that is wrong with hosting, no pun intended.
Take this a bit further and if they could add a rich UI on top of that, voila you've got yourself a Gdrive.com. Hold files, share them with others easily, manage photos, keep bookmarks, stream your mp3s even (maybe a bit much), etc, whatever. Some explorer like interface where you can make folders, drag files around and so on and now you've got yourself thin-client computing. best of all? no need for desktop search, accessible from anywhere. I don't know how long it takes Google to develop the Javascript/DHTML for all this, but man this would be a killer. Or am I crazy?
-ashot
Here's an idea, the problem that always comes up with Wikipedia is it's lack of "Authority". One of the solutions usualy proposed is to use Wikipedia as a resource from which to produce frozen "authoritive" versions.
Perhaps Google could be planning to handle this themselves. They would still have to comply with the FDL, so anyone could take Google's authoritive version. But that would loose some of the authority (Just because they SAY they copied it from Google doesn't mean they didn't change it), and most people would just use the Google version anyways just becaue it's Google's version.
On the down side, it would still be a lot of work to produce something that would be accepted as a "real encyclopedia".
I think you are missing the meaning of "success" Google employees and execs have in the last 6 months sold over 6 million shares of stock, for around 1.2 billion dollars worth of profit. That is far more profit than google has ever made since the day it was founded, in TOTAL. At what point will you agree that Google is no longer in the business of search engines, but rather in the business of selling stock? When insider stock sales hit 10 billion dollars? Are you getting the picture?
Famous last words, I know, but Wikipedia really does need the help. Even ignoring any ./-ing, their response time is degrading. If Google wants to help, more power to them, says I.
With the definitions recently changing from dictionary.com to answers.com, Google has begun using Wikipedia in its searches. If you look up a definition, the resulting answers.com page has a subsection from Wikipedia.
Google could be feeling bad about burning up the resources of a free organization so they are giving back by way of servers and bandwidth.
The question is, are the ads on answers.com Google AdSense?
Urgo: "I want to live. I want to experience the universe and I want to eat pie!"
Jack: "Who doesn't??"
What is the feasibility of having a SETI@home thing, where wikipedia acts as a waypoint for a bunch of people having screensavers going on to send out content?
I'd donate my spare bandwidth for sure.
Philosophistry
*sniff sniff*
You smell that?
I smell pussy...
Are you just jealous or what? Who gives a flying shit? Do they have good products? Check. Have they really done anything wrong? Nope. Let them be rewarded for it.
That's why they got into the game -- to make money.
Google is now linking to answers.com for defining terms. Answers.com uses Wikipedia as part of it's search results. The bandwidth for answers.com is going up and therefore Wikipedia's bandwidth is likely to go up. Google is just trying to protect it's investment and get some cool points along the way.
Devise, Repair, Solve, Build
BIND is a piece of poorly-designed, bloated crap.
You've made your point well. I tend to agree with you and previously it wasn't obvious to me. Google has acted very responsibly in their efforts, but they continue to garner more market share. Who is to say that if they are controlled by some corporate interest they may not fundamentally change their approach? This is definitely an issue worth considering.
As a shareholder of eBay it occurred to me the other day that Google could theoretically leverage their dominance online to encroach into the auction marketplace. I found this to be a scary proposition. I hope that Google recognizes that in the long run it is best for them to focus on specific areas and not do what other corporations have done, which is leverage their market share to break into new areas, whore themselves out, and shut down competition. So far Google hasn't really done this, but I agree you are right in being skeptical.
Yesh...the jokes are obnoxious. I dont think that google(or any other commercial company) have any right taking control of wikipedia. I'd be fine if it was just hosting, and mabey even a search, but companys like this have a tendancy to take over realtivly small things like this. (Look at google's buying out of keyhole *even though it wasnt a direct compeditir but niether is wikipedia) Anyways, as long as google doesent go too far, which they problably will, im OK with it.
Often, the most authoritative publicly available article on a given subject is in wikipedia, and often these articles have a high page rank.
If someone clicks on a google search result link, and the site is slow (as is sometimes the case with wikipedia), that reflects poorly on google. If google can make a large number of the pages it links to more responsive, it improves user experience, and makes google look good.
For online music search...
Yepper, right here!
.. And I woulda scrounged for it before, but I just got home after a bunch of job interviews.. (I friggin hate ties :ppppp)
:p..
Yeah, I know, obvious, but still..
Man if only Google's HR were as fast as their searches
We desperately need a distributed, redundant, peer-to-peer data storage system for wiki type web objects.
Volunteers install a program, and a user selectable amount of bandwidth and hard disk space is dedicated to the wiki system.
The main web site simply redirects the request to a peer that has a current version.
If the peer responds that it's overloaded, the server distributes the content to another peer, and redirects later requests.
Backup storage is located were the main servers are now, of course.
A more prosaic but nevertheless significant benefit: Google will probably index new Wikipedia articles immediately. Right now it can take many months for this to happen.
Two random examples of articles which haven't been found by Google yet:
Wikipedia article, Google search result (nil)
Wikipedia article, Google search result (nil)
regards, HaeB (admin on de.wikipedia)
If anything, this site should be called appledot, but hey - that's just my observation.
"Hrm, I don't think we're doing enough good... What can we do that will make nerds stop merely loving us and actually offer incense in our name?"
Seriously, this is quite slick and cool.
When I was reading on the features of MSN Search, the only one I found interesting was the automatic Encarta lookup (try it, it's pretty cool: "Who were the KKK?"). First thing I thought was that Google would surely make the same move very soon.
Will Google be ripping off that feature? Perhaps, and I surely hope so. Why not? Microsoft ripped off most of Google first and I'm not complaining about it (more power to them) . And it'd be nice giving Google cred to Wikipedia (yeah, yeah, I know of the problems with a Wiki pedia. I just hope they will find a way around them).
Current hosts (and existing offers):
There is a cluster of squids hosted for free by Lost Oasis in Paris, serving around 2TB/month. There is a serious hosting offer from a group in the Netherlands that is being pursued (this must wait on various legal details; they want to have a formal agreement with a Dutch chapter, which must first be formed, etc).
AFAIK, the only serious offers from universities have been for backup hosting in the case of / in preparation for an emergency.
SJ on en:
For those of us who cant afford the highbrow stuff maybe "scientific shit" is good enough.
Life is a continual education in the triumph of application over ability.
Wikipedia is the top (or near top) search result for an incrasing number of search terms in Google. The site can't handle all that traffic, so lots of people end up having to click on the "cached" link after waiting a few seconds and seeing an error message.
This is simply a way of making it official. Google won't be using any more bandwidth or RAM than its cache of Wikipedia already needs, but itwill save users a few seconds and some frustration.
The new MSN search offers searching through Encarta, maybe Google plans to offer searching through Wikipedia in the future?
--
I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer.
Yeah, and since GNU is said "nu," you could call it "guh-nu" too.
Google put your mouth where your money is:
give cash and let Wikipedia chose where they get the bandwidth from. That way there is no pulling the plugs if editorial conflicts occur. No profit means no profit.
Simple as possible but no simpler!
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
I too would not mind, and sometimes appreciate the placement of Google AdSense adverts alongside Wikipedia content. This has been proposed before, but why not make the text ads optional? They could be opt-out, or at the very least opt-in in the user Preferences page. I could see myself using them and would be more than glad to help out my favorite foundation and company.
This is exactly what I want to see: two of the best (and free!) internet services available working together! Google is by far the best internet search engine (for images, news, newsgroups, random web sites, etc.) and also has the best set of language and map tools, among other things. And WikiPedia -- what else can be said? -- it's simply one of the best ideas ever put to action.
I wonder... What if Google and WikiPedia kinda-sorta merge? Imagine the power of Google behind the biggest, baddest, and best encyclopedia ever created -- one freely available to anyone who wishes to browse it or also available on DVD (superversion!) or CD (lite version?). Hell, WikiPedia could do that on their own. Get someone to write program the querying and interface, burn a few prototype discs, find something that works, and ship it! Keep it simple! *ponders the idea*
has probably found plenty of people on the net who will wipe your ass for you.
With Wikipedia, will Google skip Answers.com and deal with the data source directly. as Answers.com is just an interface of many dictionaries and references.
Wikipedia will have a booth at SCALE 3x this weekend in Los Angeles. SCALE 3x will be at the LA Convention Center. Other highlights include talks by Jon "maddog" Hall, Randy Dunlap (Kernel Developer), Larry McVoy (BitKeeper) and about 30 others. Use the promo code "free" for a free expo pass and come meet some members of the wikipedia team. For a discounted full access pass use the code "NEWSP"
So maybe Wiki can limit the ability of others to do this, and give this ability exclusively to Google?
The problem with that is that exclusivity is immoral. You shouldn't be excluded from access to information just because you go use one website rather than another. You shouldn't have less news because you read one national newspaper, rather than another. Everyone deserves access to the same knowledge.
When newspapers announce that they have an exclusive story as if that's something to attract readers, I find it offensive.
Surely you mean g-url!
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
No plans for Google ads. We do send search to either Google or Yahoo now when the database servers are under an uncomfortable amount of load. I'm usually the person making that decision and I decide solely based on balancing server load and reduced service.
Instead of static caches we're using Squid caches which get updated automatically when the content changes. We're looking to place more of these in other places which use significant amounts of bandwidth or are far from Florida in response time terms.
We're aware of the risk of excessive dependence on one donor and are looking to avoid it. We're entirely happy to talk with other companies who want to share in being seen to be helping something obviously good, limited only by the suitability of the offers for our needs. I don't know what the Wikimedia Foundation board would say but personally I'm entirely happy to accept hosting from Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL or any other significant player. In my personal opinion, neutral means just that - including neutral toward all companies in the business.
If any competitor is concerned about Google getting undue benefit or prominence, the solution is simple enough: talk with us as well.
We have offers of various sorts in Europe (though more, particularly from major carriers with excellent peering arrangements, would be very welcome) and the US. We don't yet have a substantial offer in Asia and that's a major hole I'd personally love to see filled. We're very popular in Japan and a location with good peering in Japan would be good for service there.
By this time next year I'd like to see 2-6 major remote sites with database slaves and apache web servers, capable of taking over as master if there's a failure in Florida, plus 10-20+ remote Squid caching sites. A massive amount of work (and donations) required to get that done.
We've already been blocked from China ourselves on several occasions. I've little doubt that it'll happen again and in other places as well from time to time.
It's absolutely certain that we have some unknown, uncorrected copyright infringement, offensive content, politically incorrect items for various parts of the world and assorted other things some or many people find undesirable. If the chairman of the board or president of the country is making headlines worldwide for some indiscretion, expect it to be in the article. Nobody who is unduly concerned about such things should consider offering hosting - we can't guarantee the absence of such content, just that we will try to be neutral.
We're not only interested in hosting and bandwidth. I'm particularly interested in high performance disk drives or systems, high capacity RAM modules (database servers like RAM but 32GB of ECC costs $11,000...) or whole high power database servers. To give some idea, I'm thinking in terms of three quad Opterons with 32GB of RAM and 12-16 15,000 RPM SCSI drives to keep up with demand for just the English language encyclopedia project over the next 6-9 months.
No part of this post should be taken as representing the official views of the Wikimedia Foundation or any members of its board. It is, of course, blatant soliciting for donations, as you'd expect from the guy who does much of the capacity planning...:)
They 'own' web searching (and therefore in the current state of affairs the web itself), they 'own' image searching and Usenet.
Google certainly don't own web or image searching. They may be the most popular currently, but web search is just a URL, it's easy to switch and there is plenty of competition.
Now when it comes to Usenet, AFAIK they are the only people with such an extensive archive you can search, so that point is more valid.
In all their other areas though, desktop search, the new maps, Froogle, Gmail, there is plenty of health competition, and no sign of it vanishing. Indeed, when Google moves into an area it seems to encourage it. Desktop search is a hot area now, web mail companies all offering more storage space.
Even if Google offers even more services, it is only a problem if they are the only people offering it. If Google is down it would take seconds to switch to another search, mapping or similar web site. Only the web mail would be a real inconvenience.
Surely this is because MS search has Encarta, so it is in Googles interest for there to be a viable and free alternative - namely wikipedia.
I seem to remember some MS person comparing Wikipedia with a public toilet in recent times. Something about not being sure what state it will be in, and not knowing who's used it before... Personally I think Wikipedia is great though, and that's probably what really matters.
-- Mike
This is very, very wrong, for one simple reason...
They can't possibly monopolize ANYTHING even if they wanted to. Nothing they could do can stop Yahoo from running their own search engine. Nothing they can do could stop other companies from making their own USENET archive. Nothing they can do could force other e-mail providers out of business. Nothing they can do could force other online map providers out of business.
The flaw in your logic is that Google merely built better mouse traps, and continues to do so. The day someone else builds a better e-mail service, search engine, etc., it will be trivial to switch over. This is not Microsoft, it's just a webpage, and trivially easy to switch.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I thought the days of single online providers (Compuserve) was over but now it seems like Google wants to be the entire internet. They 'own' web searching (and therefore in the current state of affairs the web itself), they 'own' image searching and Usenet. Instead of loging onto the 'net it's becoming increasingly the case that you boot up Google instead.
Like it or not Compu$erve was less a monopoly and more of a pioneer. What other services other than private networks and BBSes offered electronic mail circa 1979? Or online chat circa 1980? Off peak rates were about $6.00/hr for 110/300baud, about $12 for 1200/2400 and $24 for 9600 before a major rate drop in the 90s. Outlandish by our standards but they were actually onpar with long distance rates. There were other services that were available in the 80s such as GEnie [General Electric Network for Information Exchange], The Source, Prodigy (founded 1984), and AOL (founded 1985 as Qlink). Compu$serve never really enjoyed a monopoly but did enjoy the benifits of being there first.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
1. Google is the search engine everyone goes to to find information on the web.
2. Google is a Registrar.
3. Google is a web host.
4. Google IS THE WEB!
One day all domain will resolve to Google's servers.
That one totally went over your head.... *rolls eyes*
Parent poster is Jamesday, who is (more or less) Wikipedia's chief sysadmin
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I wonder if they'd mind donating some bandwidth to the European WoW signup servers =p
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/
How do you define right wing? Anyone to the right of you?
I don't know where you people keep pulling this crap from. There's so many problems with it.
1) Jimbo is more libertarian than anything else, that's not right-wing, that's "get the hell off my back".
2) I'm about as left-wing as it gets without being classified as insane, and I find Wikipedia to have a greater problem with left-wing bias than anything else.
Where is all this supposed right-wing bias? Point us to it, it'll get fixed. Stop just spouting nonesense.
If they are hosting the content - can we assume that they will be allowed to collect stats on who is searching for what items - be it news or reference?
This type of information would align naturally with their line of business.
If they are hosting the content - can we assume that they will be allowed to collect stats on who is searching for what items - be it news or reference?
This type of information would align naturally with their line of business.
At least in the latest Pro version, Trillian has integrated Wikipedia lookup support for many terms. I find it quite useful when stuff comes up that I don't know exactly what it is, and also just for laughs to see what it says about some common stuff.
It even recognizes CowboyNeal.
Wikipedia also has entries on stuff like "All Your Base are Belong to us". If you use wikipedia as a serious encyclopedia you are an idiot. It has a nice nitch in pop culture though, if the listed info is wrong, then so what, you get a pop culture reference wrong.
If - after PageRank - somebody develops a WikiBrowseRank algorithm for studying personal search behaviour, I'd prefer it to happen in an academic setting, where no multi-billion dollar corporation is in control of the logfiles.
1995 called; they want their blind optimism back.
What the crap is this idea that if people can learn, they will? Don't you remember that the internet was supposed to Change Everything, and yet here we all are, still watching television?
Don't you remember how the internet was supposed to make us all into both content creators and consumers, transform the commercial monologue into a dialogue will millions upon millions of speakers? And how, gee, there's a lot of huge corporate presence on the internet, and the feedback button has gone out of vogue over the last few years, and most people use the internet the same way they used to use the television.
People who want to learn, will. Google and Wikipedia make it easier. But they won't enlighten humanity. The problem is, as it has always been, a people problem. And you can't solve those with technology.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Like most corporations that reach a certain size, Google has undergone a lot of criticism and seen a lot of envy from small would-be search engine start-ups. But you have to realize that there is a reason why Google is so successful - that is, it has provided a service to millions of people who have found it valuable. In addition, Google does its job very well.. providing billions of sources of information to millions of people every day. There are always going to be people who criticize big corporations like Google, and perhaps at times they have good reasons to. But most of the time the "evil empire" syndrome is based largely on misinformation. To learn some useful stuff about Google, especially if you are a webmaster, take a look at http://googleadvisor.org/.