Dvorak on Google and Wikipedia

cryptoluddite writes "PC Magazine has an article by John C. Dvorak expanding on the community discussion of Google's offer for free web hosting of Wikipedia. Those against the deal point out that Google may be planning to co-opt the encyclopedia as Googlepedia (by restricting access to the complete database). In a revealing speech given by the Google founders, Larry Page says he would 'like to see a model where you can buy into the world's content. Let's say you pay $20 per month.' Should public domain information be free?" It's a pretty scary scenario painted, but one can hardly take a speech from 2001 as serious evidence these days. Update: 02/16 20:16 GMT by T : This story links inadvertently to the second page of the column; here's a link to the first page.

Comments

Re:Oh great.

[sbrowning]

Too late, they've already dipped their feet in the evil pool. Their news feeds are selected to favor their own political leanings. No doubt they will apply the same bias to wikipedia if they get their hands on it.

Let's not forget the most important thing here:

[galaxy300]

John C. Dvorak is a schmuck.

Re:First rule about public businesses

[John Newman]

Guess what, even Kaiser and Cancer treatment places are there to MAKE MONEY, not for any other purpose.

Many hospitals and "cancer treatment places" are run as not-for-profit organizations, precisely because there are some businesses for which the bottom line should not be maximum profit.

But yes, Google is a public company now, and as such is statutorily required to maximize profits. Page and Brin could be sued for doing anything else.