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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.
Google wouldn't be like msn and only show certain articles, plus that wouldn't work with wikipeida since it's user made/edited
Signatures are so 90s
Wow --
"It's a pretty scary scenario painted, but one can hardly take a speech from 2001 as serious evidence these days."
That's horrible.
Wouldn't Wikipedia take measures to ensure nothing bad happened? I mean, that's what contracts are for...
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
And this is another thing they can leverage in their war against MS... Next up, a total web-based OS (Firefox/Linux backend?)... Would be interesting to see where this is going; someone needs to stand up to the behemoth that is Microsoft, for the sake of all mankind!
Just hosting Wikipedia would work with google's already profitable model. Why would they bother creating a fee based model for a community product?
What do we do if Google turns evil?
I'm a big tall mofo.
This is something that will be very interesting. The information in wikipedia should be available to everyone for free. There could be an interesting situation where people could subscribe to a service to have no advertising. That way it would pay for the wikipedia services to continue running, while still providing the benefit to the community. I know I use online services reguarly and its something that I would pay a nominal fee for without complaining to much.
However it must have both free and subscription based services for it to be a viable system.
Lots of people know that Wikipedia hasn't had the server power to keep up, but a pay-for-service model isn't the answer. A free web-based encyclopedia is what makes wikipedia so great.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
I thought the content on Wikipedia was licensed under a free, open license? How can Google "revoke" that to do this?
if someone ruins it, sure it is a shame, but something else will pop up to replace it. The internet is just a big game of whack-a-mole, no matter if you are the RIAA, the Feds, a kiddie porn fiend, or a information seeker.
It's kind of the whole point...
i saw the baby, and the baby looked at me
Can they do that? The wikipedia is governed by the GNU Free Documentation License . . .wikipedia details here.
Speculation runs rife. I guess security through well... not very obscurity's bound to get someone chatting in the end.
The deal in the short to medium term with wikipedia is expected to be the provision of about a dozen caching servers. No actual database work would be done by google. There is already a small (3) squid cluster in Paris that does this for users in the UK and France saving on some transatlantic bandwidth.
Whether Wikipedia should accept is another matter. I don't think that they should. It's much easier to appear independent if you have to pay your way, and for an encyclopedia, appearing independent is really pretty important.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Yes, yes it should indeed be free. Information is the essential ingredient to the advancement of society. This is why public libraries, schools, and lectures were created, so that information could be dissemenated to all individuals who actively sought it out for themselves and for their children. Charging $20 a month for access to information is an outrageous idea and is particularly frightening when uttered by an individual whose company holds the key to so much of the electronic information on the web. I think if they continue with his "vision" of the future, Google's usage will plummet quite rapidly.
Hasn't the Open Source community taught anyone the value of free information exchange??
In 2001, that was still a cutting edge idea. People knew there was a way to make everything accessable, but weren't entirely sure what revenue model could support that.
$20 a month was (and is) a small price to pay for everything, if "everything" is correct and up to date.
I'd certianly pay a subscription for Google now, because their service is of value to me.
Never confuse volume with power.
As opposed to private businesses which have no interest in maximizing profits?
What?
I'm fine with Google offering a faster mirror/interface to Wikipedia, because mirroring of information is always good. From the last /. article on the subject, I gathered that Google would offer their faster processing power and ub3r bandwidth to Wikipedia....but that doesn't necessarily mean they get to hijack the content....they'd just provide a faster way to get to information that's mirrored elsewhere.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
First, if the relationship between the Wikipedia and Google can be properly maintained, and boundaries established, I think this is a good thing for the Wikipedia.
People are fearful that Google will attempt to co-opt the Wikipedia. That's what is apparent in the Dvorak article. However, what Wikipedia needs is a slick lawyer to write a contract between Google and Wikipedia. (IANASL)
1. Google will host the Wikipedia as a donation.
2. Google will not restrict access to the Wikipedia except as mutually agreed upon by both parties, and a public page to explain what restrictions and why. At no time will restrictions be based upon subscriptions or charges.
3. Wikipedia will put a slick Google icon somewhere on the page to say "thanks Google for hosting us."
4. This agreement may be terminated with fair notice to the other party at any time.
If Wikipedia is able to maintain its autonomy, and the relationship is clearly labelled a donation of server space, then I think the Wikipedia could be hosted on Google.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Second, Google may just want to be in on the ground floor if and when Wikipedia decides to allow Adsense-type ads.
Third, companies do often do charitable things. It's a tax write-off.
Given those three things, I recommend that some commenters pay attention to the big, friendly letters in the subject line.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
What does Google have a monopoly on? There are other search engines I can easily use. Maybe you should look up the definition of monopoly?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
You are a hippie idiot. Any company is a company to make MONEY, not to serve some general good. Guess what, even Kaiser and Cancer treatment places are there to MAKE MONEY, not for any other purpose. Maybe the people working there do so out of the "kindness of their heart," but that is not the intent of the organization as a whole. Same with Google. Same with Slashdot. And same with anything else.
A blog like any other.
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.
/. story could have equally read "Does Google Want to Pay Wiki authors?" but of course, that would have derailed cryptoluddite's agenda to smear Google.
The only thing "revealing" about that article is that Page continues "Somebody else needs to figure out how to reward all the people who create the things that you use. " In other words, what Page would like to see is a system where "users" pay for accessing content and "contributors" are paid for providing it.
This
To the editors: when you see the words may be planning, just ignore the submission in the future. TIA.
Public domain information is already free (free as in speech), but that doesn't mean that somebody can't also charge for it.
It's no different than the GPL -- also free as in speech, but not necessarily free as in beer.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
15 or so years ago Dvorak had some insightful articles, even if they didn't always come 100% true. Nowadays he's another has-been from a past era trying to pimp his FUD and general tech conspiracy theories. IMO, if you steadily bet AGAINST Dvorak you'll come out ahead over the long run.
In the days of 10Mhz 286's I used to really enjoy John's columns. Now, I don't know if I've just gotten smarter, or he's gotten dumber (heh), but I can't remember the last time he didn't seem like a technology lunatic to me.
-This sig intentionally left blank
As serious evidence? No. But thanks for the commentary.
No, what it is telling of though, is the mindset at Google at the time of writing. This little insight is important now because it's quite possible that their end goal is to monopolize information in such a way as to extract their income from it.
As they've recently made copious amounts of money and gained incredible power, it's quite possible its gone to their heads. Let's not paint them as a humanitarian group just because we like them: they are a company, after all, and have the same potential for evil that Microsoft (or any large company or government) has and does demonstrate.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Since the copyrights are owned by the people who contribute to the articles, Google would have to contact each of them and ask them to relicense their contributions under a less permissive one. It's a bit like when that dude asked if a Linux kernel snapshot could be released under a BSD license for $50,000. Not going to happen.
Books that are in the public domain still cost money. Anyone has rights to publish them, but publishing them is still a business enterprise and still costs money. If google hosts Wikipedia, they ought to be able to attempt to make money off of it, but NOT by leveraging IP ownership or DRM. As long as the information can still be freely distributed as a public domain resource, mirrored by other interested parties, etc., then I don't see a problem with google hosting and charging for access.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
In /. case, no, it's definitely not worth any money to me. I use /. to kill time while my project is building at work. Occasionally, there are articles that interest me. My contribution is not putting /. in adblock.
Google is entirely different. It provides access to information in a format that is much more agreeable to me than other searches I've used. Unlike what others have claim, I regularly click on the ad links because they are often relevant to the information I'm looking for. I personally feel Google maps kicks the crap out of other tools. If they found a way to make their service significantly more usable, it would certainly be worth it to me.
Hints (2 Things that'd move me closer to being willing to pay):
Integrate Google maps with movie showtimes, as in IMDB's theater database. If possible, read my local paper and correlate showtimes from there, since not all my local theaters keep their times up to date online.
Correlate restaraunt searches in google maps with reviews. I'd like a review aggregate for a total star rating of nearby messages when I get directions via SMS. I'd like to be able to filter places that google believes suck, based on their their review data.
Never confuse volume with power.
Dvorak's doing much the same thing for the tech industry that your paper's sports columnists do for the local teams. His role isn't "provide a balanced picture of such-and-so," it's more like "provoke a reaction by pushing every subject to distorted extremes."
Every sports section has at least one writer like that. Their job is to generate traffic, or responses, by staking out polemical opinions. Usually the one writer who pulls this duty paints a bleak picture of the local teams' moves, so as to get the loyalists to write in. It helps circulation. The same people work extra shifts on call-in shows, pretty often.
In this case, our sage has consistently been on the wrong side of basically every technology he's commented on in my book. He's a sort of gadfly to all things Apple, for example. (His reaction to the idea of the mouse was as spectacularly wrong as anything ever written on computers.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
It seems to me that they're talking about copyrighted content here. Rather than concocting a plan to bundle up free content and make people pay Google for access, it looks to me like Page was actually talking about reasonable means of access to copyrighted information.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
PC Magazine is zombie, it's empire crumbled, aside from it's regular product comparison charts (which are widely blamed for much of today's feature-bloat) nobody would still be aware of it's continued existence. From that sad little bailiwick Dvorak bleats for attention and worse yet the gullible wanna-be defenders rush to dispute him.
This week he's on a smear against Google & Wikipedia. It could as well been another (willfully) know-nothing Linux FUD article, or another Mac-troll, or whatever. They're all trash and only PHB's struck in the 80's still pay the slightest attention to his "opinions" (quotes because I don't think be means a bit of what he says himself.)
The folks who run Wikipedia are notably honest. To date the folks at Google have done pretty well by their "No Evil" credo. Everything on Wikipedia is open so if need be it could be quickly reconstituted elsewhere. Thus, whatever the negotiations between Wikipedia & Google there's nothing to fear.
If the current Wikipedia administration does something heinously stupid the project will route around them. Besides which the best guesses are Google is talking bandwidth & caching, perhaps prioritized ranking, not ownership.
Dvorak, he's taking an old quote out of context and trying to create a scare. That's not reporting, or even editorializing, that's just baiting, pure & simple. Don't play into his game, he's the SCO of journalism.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
First, full discloser - I'm a long time wikipedia user and I probably accidentally played a peripheral role in breaking this story. I first heard about the google deal back in July. Google is not the first company to offer to host wikipedia. The typical offer comes from "Mom and Pop ISPs" (Jimbo's words) that really don't have any idea what they're getting themselves into (1,400 hits/sec is a helleva lot to do for free). What I have to say in reply to this story is - it is, IMHO, totally FUD. It's completely hypothetical, and it's unrealistic. You have to remember - all the text on Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License or in the public domain; all the images and audio are licensed under the GNU Free Documetnation license, or CC-by-SA, or something liberal equivalent. So even if, on the off chance, Google succumbs to the Corporate pressure to be evil, anyone can take the text and reuse it in less evil ways. Furthmore, I trust Jimbo, Angela, and Anthere (the visible members of the board) in dealing with google to make sure the deal is done right by the rest of us contributors. There's a long history on Wikipedia of being against ads of any form - the spanish wikipedia forked several years ago over hypothetical discussion of it.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Not much to pay at all, I call it my Internet bill and that's why I have the internet.
The internet was not created to provide a revenue model. Countless companies learned this in the dot.bomb. It's not like cable or satellite where my choices are limited and if I don't pay I don't get content. Wikipedia came about for a reason. If it goes subscription it immediately loses value because now articles are only maintained/created by subscribers.
If it goes subscription another free/open online encyclopaedia will take its place, the same way that FreeDB came about after CDDB required buying a license to use in applications.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
You're wrong. The problem wasn't that we didn't have enough servers, but that the servers we had were misconfigured. The slowness experienced in January was resolved when the configuration bugs were ironed out. The problem is a lack of skilled sysadmins and developers. (And for the record, we just put in an order for 10 more servers)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I fear that authors/editors would withdraw from Wikipedia if it were under the arm (or in the iron-fist) of a for-profit company. If these people felt like Google was profiting on the backs of their freely-contributed content, these content creators would leave and the Wiki would whither for lack of fresh/updated content. Donating time so that other may profit does not seem likely.
What is interesting is that Amazon makes this work. The company is clearly a for-profit entity. Yet its crown jewels are the volunteer-created book reviews. I'm not sure what makes this work. It might be that friends-of-authors are motivated to post glowing reviews, it might be that people who disliked the book are motivated to post scathing reviews, it might be that some reviewers simply like to publish, or all of the above. Perhaps Wiki/Google-pedia could borrow this model to mix free-labor with for-profit.
Looking further into the future on an alternate path, I wonder if Googlepedia could become a fully for-profit (or at least self-sufficient) professionally run and staffed encyclopedia. With micro-royalties to authors/editors (and moderation-based revocation of payments for "bad" content), the organization would attract content creators on a for-pay basis. This aligns the motivational underpinnings of the organization with those of the content creators. The current Wikipedia is for-free people creating for-free content. A future Googlepedia could by for-pay people creating for-pay content.
One overriding lesson from Wikipedia (and Slashdot for that matter) is the ultimate necessity of sources of hard currency for online sites. As long as something is small (and below a certain scale of popularity) it can survive on donated hardware, bandwidth, or the benevolence of a monied patron (someone who pays the hosting bills out-of-pocket). But once it reaches a certain scale, the cost of serious server power, bandwidth, and professional administrators pushes the budget far beyond the hobby scale. Although pleas for donations can help, I suspect large-scale sites must, ultimately, turn to ads, tie-in product sales, and subscriptions.
What is fascinating, in a long-term trend sense, is that the cost of scale are steadily declining. Cheaper hardware, declining bandwidth costs, and improvements in systems management tools mean that sites can reach ever-larger scales before generating prohibitive burn rates on costs. The number of visitors that a hobbyist/free-site can support continues to rise. Perhaps Wike need only wait for the singularity point when the cost to reach (and serve packets to) the entire world is within the reach of a home-grown, volunteer-run organization.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The speech certainly is revealing - it reveals cryptoluddite's agenda, which is anti-google.
If you look at the quote in context, I think it's pretty clear that google is not talking about doing the selling, unless they are the gateway to ALL the content. They will never be that gateway. I do think that there is a market for commercial versions of some of this media, but I think the future is that you will pay only for directed media, and for convenient access to media. For instance a newspaper will have several classes of information, based on what they think they can sell to who; There will be information that is free on the web and also in print, information that is included in the cost of the paper but for which you must pay extra on the web, and so on.
In the meantime sites like E2 and Wikipedia will probably be freely available for the forseeable future, but I would like to see them have commercial or "pro" versions of the site. For example, the pay site would have full-text searching, and the free side might not (and in both cases, currently does not.) You would also be able to enter RFBs for research papers, and you could accept them based on price and posting history. This model would work better for E2 than for Wikipedia due to Wikipedia's collaborative nature, but it is not inapplicable to Wikipedia.
Anyway, any comissioned research would become a part of the database at an appropriate time (possibly part of the license agreement) and thus everyone would benefit. At the minimum, the site would make a commission, which would definitely benefit all of the service's users.
This is precisely the way software is going, and I don't see any reason that all kinds of media won't see the same development. In fact, I see no way that any kind of media can survive without making this transition.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Similarly, there are two ways to stop people from reading a library book: you can remove the book from the shelf, or you can just remove it's entry in the card catalog.
We should all keep in mind that Google is becomming the "card catalog" for much of the on-line world. Many would argue that if it doesn't exist on the from page of a Google search, then for most of the world, it just doesn't exist.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
First any offer of hosting by Google or anybody else for that matter will not make the 40 or so servers that the Wikimedia Founation already owns go away or stop the foundation from paying its own hosting costs for those servers. Nor will it stop donations from coming in so the foundation can buy more hardware and bandwidth. And the foundation is *not* going to just rely on any one hosting partner but will instead seek out and act upon multiple offers (this is in fact necessary due to the exponential growth of traffic to the sites it operates; such as Wikipedia.org).
The most glaring omission Dvorak makes is the simple fact that due to the license Wikipedia uses, that it would be impossible for any one company to control it. If the 'end' were really near, somebody with better intentions could just download the *whole* Wikipedia and host it. But it would never come to that because the foundation would not allow it ; its very mission is to ensure free access to the projects it runs.
I'm very disappointed in Dvorak.
So, we left that week with much improved load balancing for the Apaches. Much more consistent page load times now.