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Google Donates $2 Million To the Wikimedia Foundation
k33l0r writes "Yesterday, the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia and other projects, announced that it has received a $2 million donation from Google. This is the first time that Google has supported Wikipedia, and it has many wondering why. Anyone remember Knol, Google's answer to Wikipedia?"
Google must get huge revenue from searches like $WHATEVER wikipedia
Set your phasers on "funky"!
...Google, please please please don't even think about offering to buy Wikimedia. I (and others that use their services) appreciate your donation, but it does make me a bit nervous...
Living With a Nerd
The impact of the Gates' money is immediate, but in the long run a well-funded knowledge base is much more effective at raising the standard of living worldwide. Again, Google upstages Microsoft. Is there anything they can't fail at?
No, Google donating $2 million to Wikipedia doesn't even come close to upstaging the enormous philanthropy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
As the article already states: there are "long-term motivations" at play here, (probably to soften its image) in preparation for some new project, as already mentioned with Firefox and Chrome.
As usual, since the article summary does not include this info which is easily found by reading the article, people will speculate here in the forums and end up rewriting the article themselves :D
because Bing does http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation isn't Microsoft. It just belongs to Bill Gates.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
Wow. Trolling this took talent. Both are good causes, and I would say vaccinating a population so they can survive will do wonders for raising their standard of living. It is hard to build knowledge when you are dead.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donates money to .. school building in third world countries.
... a well-funded knowledge base is much more effective at raising the standard of living worldwide.
Do you really think that Wikipedia is more essential to a well-funded knowledge base than schools? Oh I forgot, everything Google does is better than anything Bill Gates does.
Google has kept Wikimedia afloat with gimmicked page rankings and search results for years.
I had completely forgotten Knol existed until right now. I promptly did a quick search for a popular video game's title and was given this.
Chilling the circuits is still not efficient if you are using more electricity to do it... But chilling the circuits in outer space could be done efficiently by using the cold environment of space itself to chill them...
It looks like they've basically reinvented Geocities.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
because Google makes $500m a year off typos...
I'd be more impressed if Google would donate even $50-100.000 to Wikileaks - it brings almost as much good as Wikipedia. Not every benefit is directly visible.
No, Google donating $2 million to Wikipedia doesn't even come close to upstaging the enormous philanthropy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Do you mean, giving poor countries some drugs but only if they agree to not produce any more domestically?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
As I told on my Twitter account..., just a little quick math:
Google's revenues on Q409: $6,6 billion dollars. So $2 millions (0.000299% of that) wasted here and there don't seem much of a problem.
I was much more generous. My Q409 was well bellow that, and I donated $10. That's aprox 0.0024% of that revenues. 10 times more.
Google claims a commitment to freedom of information, yet Wikileaks languishes. Wikimedia was not faced with a shutdown due to lack of funds -- Wikileaks was.
In terms of bang for the buck, a fraction of what they gave to Wikimedia would have done much more "good" at Wikileaks.
I don't remember Knol, but I do remember everything2, Slashdot's failed attempt at a Wikipedia.
Again, Google upstages Microsoft.
Well, to be fair, that wasn't Microsoft, it was Bill Gates. Yes, he built his money from Microsoft but we need to wait and see what Larry and Sergey do with their cash when they hit Gates' age.
The impact of the Gates' money is immediate, but in the long run a well-funded knowledge base is much more effective at raising the standard of living worldwide.
Now you've gone and done it. Now you've put me in the very awkward position of defending William Gates. Recently the foundation committed $10 billion to Malaria Research and Development . Not distribution and deployment but R&D. Technically this has no immediate effect but instead contributes to our "well-funded knowledge base" of vaccine development. It's entirely probable that the first world will benefit from $10 billion being dumped into any medical R&D. I'm not even going to get into the number of zeros that ten billion has compared to two million but I trust you to be able to discern between the significance.
... like who gets the money, where the money is spent and how American companies keep building their infrastructure off of it when you should probably be dumping it into the countries that you pledged to help.
I got my own problem with the Gates Foundation
Is there anything they [Google] can't fail at?
The summary lists Knol. Recently I watched Wave flounder. You're being disingenuous to claim that all Google touches is gold. Their advertising revenues support a lot of their endeavors similar to how Microsoft operating system stranglehold allowed them to elbow their way into hardware and gaming. Impressive? Yes. King Midas? No. Infallible? No.
My work here is dung.
They probably mostly did it for publicity. And this article on Slashdot was probably $2 million worth of good press to them.
Remember, a lot of people on this site are avid technologists who are becoming suspicious of Google now over privacy and such things. But they are all going to have a geekgasm over this donation to Wikipedia.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Maybe Google will buy the Firefox guys an H.264 license. I wonder if they would accept it.
Well Google still is relatively a new company (at least as a company successful enough to be handing out millions to charity), I am sure they just never got around to it yet.
Big companies give money to charity and Wikimedia makes sense for Internet based companies like Google because they make the web so much more worth using.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
How to buy a charity: you buy its assets including goodwill, trademark rights/copyrights, and assume its contracts including employment agreements through a "novation agreement".
Such a sale/assumption requires the consent of the trustees of the charity. Since charities exist (ostensibly) for benevolent purposes rather than profit, you don't ever hear about such agreements, because they don't happen.
do no ation
<quote>
<quote><p>The impact of the Gates' money is immediate, but in the long run a well-funded knowledge base is much more effective at raising the standard of living worldwide. Again, Google upstages Microsoft. Is there anything they can't fail at?</p></quote>
<p>No, Google donating $2 million to Wikipedia doesn't even come close to upstaging the enormous philanthropy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.</p></quote>
Its a simple case of evil verses evil.
That bare minimum only goes to the people that have health concerns because they work for/live close at the companies that polute, in which the Bill Gates foundation holds stock, so it's buying off the guilt.
[citation needed]
As someone who works with a variety of nonprofits which receive funding from the Gates Foundation, I must say: you are either an idiot, a troll, or a person with remarkably bad skills at satire. Hard to tell. GF funds work all over the world in ways that have nothing to do with corporate proximity or pollution.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
It's in Googles interest to keep Wikipedia running strong. It gives them a massive, (mostly) reliable source of good information to stick at the top of a results page. If Wikipedia can't pay the bills, then MS and Google will have to fight over who is going to buy it and the inevitable PR disaster that would follow as users splintered, competitors emerged and we all lose something really wonderful. The problem is that Wikimedia could very easily become dependent on that kind of money. I think they should just have a single text ad on every page until they meet their monthly goal. Allow people who donate to turn them off. Tada!
Wave isn't even officially launched. It is also a protocol more than a service.
Let's not call Wave a flop just yet.
I think Google is sitting on a variety of different pieces that they haven't put together yet. I think they have the potential to put these pieces together and really changing the way people use the internet.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Nothing like that will happen. The Wikimedia Foundation has received large grants before (such as Omidyar's $2M grant). WMF isn't a company you can just 'buy out'. It's a charitable 501(c)(3) organization that is controlled by the Board of Trustees, which is composed of 3 community-elected seats, 2 community-seats elected by chapters, a "Jimbo-seat" for the Wikipedia founder, and up to four "Specific expertise" seats elected by the board itself (source). Google could attempt to get a "Specific expertise" seat, but they can't do anything to significantly change the course of the foundation. Also, if they tried, there'd be a major outcry by the community (and perhaps a fork).
(To be fair, one should address the Omidyar case. Around the time Omidyar granted $2M, Matt Halprin, an Omidyar employee got a "Specific expertise" seat. There were of course conspiracy theories about Omidyar 'buying' a seat in the board. I've discussed this matter with one of the board members, and the result was something like this: Omidyar didn't 'buy' a seat, but in the grant negotiations, they became aware of Matt Halprin's expertise and realized of which value he'd be on the board.)
It's more like Google that gave the money, not one or two of their stockholders, when Microsoft gives money it's usually to "smooth" a little some deal, so keep Bill Gates out of this.
...does that mean WikiMedia will also be classified as kiddie porn in Australia now?
Its not like Google bought a controlling interest in wp, it was a donation. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
but only spends 3% of their endowment in a given year
Do you suggest they spend it all in 1 year?
If you want a foundation that does good for a long time you find ways to invest the money so it continues to do good for a long time. They just started a couple of years ago. So they are feeling around how to spend money. Who are the real players etc....
They have struck me as people who find others who are capable of doing something then back them up. However, it is also semi pragmatic. If you go buy a database server you do not go buy MSSQL and Oracle. You buy one or the other.
At this point they are kind of floundering around without a proper goal. Do they need to better follow thru? Sounds like it. But I am sure they will learn that lesson the hard way.
I think its a combination of several or all of those. Hard time reading his message, he is way off as Gates does not give the base minimum (100's of millions is a minimum)? Plus the fact that this idiot has to point out that someone 'misses' the point. Get over yourself and take some basic english classes to learn how to spell and form a complete sentence (and a complete thought woudl be nice as well).
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is sitting on billions, but only spends 3% of their endowment in a given year.
The correct number is more like twice that, and is typical of foundations that spend money based on endowments, the point of an endowment is to allow an organization to do work over an extended period of time, something impossible to do if you spend 50% of your money every year.
If you looked at actual dollars handed out in a given year, I wouldn't be shocked if Google (and Google.org) hands out more cash than the Gates Foundation.
2009 Gates Foundation: $3.8B: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2632188420090126
Google.org's entire charitable endowment is less than a third of that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google.org.
It ain't even close, you're off by at least two orders of magnitude.
The Gates Foundation has been asking others to give to them to hand out. The largest contributer to the Gates Foundation is Warren Buffet.
[citation needed]
Gates' donation to the foundation is of a similar size to Buffet's, the tho had known each other for many years (play bridge together, I'm told). The Gates Foundation survived for many years with no other contributions, and I'm unaware of a single dollar that's come from any other source.
There have been many well-researched in-depth pieces that suggest The Gates Foundation is doing more harm than good right now.
[citation needed]
The LA Times 2007 piece questioning the Foundations never made that particular claim, it did raise a signficant issue in that direction though. Because endowments must invest the money they hope to use for work in the future, conflicts arise when those investments do harm. It's entirely fair to say that it's irreponsible not to look those costs.
Of course, if you read, say, the articles in the Times that discussed this, you almost certainly saw the article in the Times a few days later saying that the Gates Foundation had decided to reassess its investments for social responsiblity.
(I'd admit, by the way, that those questions can still be pretty complex. A few obvious corporations aside, most corporations do quite a number of things, many of them bad, many of them good. "How much?" can be a very challenging thing to quantify.
When The Gates Foundation was pressed about it, they said they can't be bothered to research the firms they invest it.
[citation needed]
But there are people who've linked Gates Foundation investments to Microsoft contracts and strong-armed deals.
[citation needed]
Until it is clear that The Gates Foundation is doing more good than harm, I'm not sure we should be so quick to praise them, let alone donate money to them.
Nobody is asking you to, in fact, can you point me at a place where it is possible to donate to the Gates Foundation? No, you can't, because they don't accept external donations in general. Show me the donate button on this page, and we'll talk:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx
I'm a nature photographer.
But quickly corrected:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation_and_Wikipedia
Google has their core cash cow but everything else seems half assed. Not everything, but knol, wave, buzz, base, orkut, etc. I understand, it's more fun to design and build new stuff, but epic failure. MS is similar, of course, but they are seem willing to dump money and resources into some of their half assed shit (zune, xbox)
Google paid 2 million just so Wiki would unlock Bill Gates's page so Google can go back to defacing it for giggles. $$$ well spent
The problem with giving to Wikimedia is that they have been so wasteful of the money they've been given. The move to the Bay Area is chief exhibit #1 - why move an organization whose whole purpose, mission, and asset is a web page to one of the most expensive real estate locations on earth?
I'm not the only one who thinks Wikimedia has more than enough money.
Advice: on VPS providers
I came here to post what parent said, and subsequently got modded troll for.
Could someone please link the the list of views that qualify as troll?
Always back up, never back down. ---- Think you're cool 'cos your uid is prime? Take mine, modulo the one digit integers
Actually, as a long-time Wikipedia contributor I have mixed views on this. I think you underestimate the potential influence a large donor can have. Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects claim to have a neutral point of view. That view could be potentially influenced by major donors if they donate enough. In general, the Foundation has very little input into editing, but occasionally does step in, generally when there is some major legal reason or when a Foundation board member (such as Jim Wales) is asked by someone to look personally into something. Even when he's acting personally and not for the foundation, having Wales edit something is going to have an impact with the editors. Moreover, donations like this will give editors a personal feeling of gratitude towards Google which could impact the coverage in a favorable way even at a very subtle and not deliberate level. If Google decided that some newspaper was worth supporting that was going under and gave them 2 million dollars, we'd worry about what that did to journalistic integrity. This isn't that different. (Note incidentally that this is not the first time a major donation has raised this sort of worry. Earlier there was a large donation from one Richard Branson's organizations. Given his political views and political activities that one is arguably more of a concern about neutrality. But the issues are essentially identical).
On technical topics I just go directly to the place I know, like Wolfram.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
On any topic, Google's search engine is designed to be an interface to the rest of the web, not a source of its own.
Your complaint is like complaining that a car is useful only as a means of transportation.
Could Google just completely buy out whoever owns the H.264 patents?
Hell no. I don't think Google has the cash to buy a 51 percent stake in each of these companies. For one thing, Google (market cap 171 billion USD) would have to buy Apple (market cap 184 billion USD).
"Yeah right, because Gates does it out of their hearts... you're an idiot if you think that."
you are effectively trolling. Common notes to look for - Lack of supporting information for the claims, calling other people names.
Observe:
http://knol.google.com/k/macedonia-the-greek-kingdom-in-antiquity#
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Macedonia
As someone who works with a variety of nonprofits which receive funding from the Gates Foundation, I must say: you are either an idiot, a troll, or a person with remarkably bad skills at satire. Hard to tell. GF funds work all over the world in ways that have nothing to do with corporate proximity or pollution.
This is slashdot. Bill Gates could sacrifice himself saving a toddler from a burning building and most of the comments on the story would likely be to the effect that the reason the building burned down in the firstplace was the firehall down the street had a computer in it running Windows.
Please take the plunge and get added informative points by providing supporting information to this claim. Otherwise, your argument is non-existant.
Google makes no money off of those searches unless you search for "$WHATEVER wikipedia" and then click on a sponsored link (and not the Wikipedia page you were actually looking for.)
If you click through to the Wikipedia, or do a Feeling Lucky search, all Google gets out of the deal is a higher bandwidth bill.
There's a difference between philanthropy and asset protection and avoiding taxes.
When you give $1 to a bum, that's philanthropy.
When you put billions into a charitable foundation, it's a simple scheme to avoid paying taxes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Nobody is asking you to, in fact, can you point me at a place where it is possible to donate to the Gates Foundation? No, you can't, because they don't accept external donations in general.
Were one to advocate for the devil one might point out that every purchase of a PC which has ever come preinstalled with Windows due to Microsoft's per-processor licenses was and is an involuntary donation to the Gates Foundation.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Oh I forgot, everything Google does is better than anything Bill Gates does.
Bingo!
This is the result when you have people who have a reputation for saying they are going to stop doing some bad thing only to be caught doing it time and again. It's the same as crying wolf. After a while, people who recall the reputation (embrace, extend, extinguish for just one example) will suspect the future motives for everything they do, even if it really is noble this time (and I'm not saying that it is, but I haven't found anything particularly damning). It really shouldn't be that surprising when people become suspicious of people who have shown such a history of underhanded tactics. Maybe they've really changed, but maybe we just haven't seen the full plan yet? It wouldn't be the first time, and that's the really sad part.
I just learned that Google earns 500m on typos alone. Wikipedia is full of typos (and incorrect 'facts', but that's another issue). The 2m is just a "thank you".
Your entire post is FUD and garbage.
Take your hate elsewhere.
Try Googling "kind girls" and press "I'm feeling lucky"...
:-)
Who wouldn't love a 'suggest for Google Community Donation (tm)' button with that.
I agree with the overall statements, and the OP obviously doesn't understand the purpose of an endowment, but what's the deal with all the [citation needed] stuff. This is /., not Wikipedia. People are allowed to wear tin-foil hats with out backing up their facts.
People are allowed to wear tin-foil hats with out backing up their facts.
You're right, I should have just said "you're full of $#$!."
See also: http://xkcd.com/285/
I'm a nature photographer.
OK here's my theory... just hear me out. Google is in the business of indexing the internet, right? That's a pretty hard job! Maybe Google is having some trouble keeping up; maybe they're looking for someone to "lighten the load" a little, as it were. That's where wikipedia comes in. The way I figure it, Google would like to see the wikipedia editors expand their domain of influence. Imagine if wikipedia editors had the power to delete knowledge not only from wikipedia, but from the web as a whole! If google gets wikipedia editors to delete all the non-notable content from the internet, Google's job get's a lot easier! Really makes you think...
I didn't say they had to buy every company who purchased a license. They'd have to buy the patent owner.
The page I linked has the title "licensors", which means "patent holders". There is no single H.264 patent holder; the patent pool is spread out among a couple dozen companies and administered by MPEG LA.
I would be impressed if they delivered the whole 3.8B to ALL the people not getting any help on yearly basis, if they managed to get 3.8B, they can accomplish to get similar figures on a few years, there is way more good on puting the money where needed that "economizing it" to "be able to help for more years".
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
I can see how the submitter might be surprised that Google would help Wikipedia, which competed with its own Knol, because Google has certainly never tried to do this before
However trolling this is easy. Vaccinating a population so that they survive actually lowers their standard of living because now there are more mouths to feed and less resources to take care of them. Technically speaking, i.e. just running the numbers it would have been better to just let them die so that the survivors could have a better standard of living. See now that wasn't so hard to Troll.
It should also be noted that placing your money in a charity foundation makes it becomes untaxable. Whatever good the foundation does, it comes at the expense of the American government. This is an old trick. Rockefeller pulled as well. When Bill dies the foundation can be passed down to his children without any inheritance taxes.
Hell, the idea was satirized before Bill Gates was a billionaire. Read God Bless you Mr. Rosewater, by Kurt Vonnegut. Using a charity foundation to store your funds is like keeping it in a Swiss bank but it buys good PR. Then consider that a lot of the "good deeds" the Bill & Melinda Foundation does includes giving Windows PCs to developing countries in hopes that Microsoft will monopolize the region.
While I agree that guy was trolling (unintentionally), I also agree with his point. They say the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist. Well the greatest trick that Bill Gates ever pulled was convincing the world that he's a philanthropist. Ever notice how whenever MS does something particularly evil Gates makes sure to do something with the foundation that will get media buzz?
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
You misunderstand. 3.8 billion is what they spent in 2009, they spent all of that figure. They have significantly more money than that.
I do not agree with your main point, though. Depending on the specific project involved, "blowing every penny you have" the first year can be madness. Vaccine research takes years to get from first investment to results, delivering vaccines or mosquito nets involves not only dropping the money but putting together an organization that can get those to the people who need them.
Spending at the "slow" rate of "only" four billion dollars a year doesn't seem that unreasonable to me. *shrug*
I'm a nature photographer.
A good way to spend some of the $500 million they make from ads on typosquatting domains.
Hey, how's it going?
The whole point of Knol was to provide source material for Wikipedia articles. Remember?
Who is 'they'- Google or Microsoft? I ask because your question "Is there anything they can't fail at?" implies that 'they' have never done anything right. So it must be Microsoft....right?
Does it really matter whether Google or Gates has spent MORE on things which can be listed on one's taxes as "charity?" Of course Bill Gates outspends every other charity. It's no different than how Microsoft is run. Outspend everyone else because glory is more important than efficiency, market dominance is more important than shareholders. How would Bill get all the press he's so desperate for if someone else had a better charity organization. Perhaps if he didn't feel the need to call the press and be an interview whore every time his foundation spend a penny I would suspect that he may be sincere but I really don't buy it. It's not like his foundation needs press, as you pointed out, it's not funded by donations.
To paraphrase Anthony Burgess, "It's not good deeds that makes one good, but good intent."
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
And I don't mean this as a troll on MS- I am just confused about the wording. What the hell did that mean?
It's extremely un-PC to say this, and it's also somewhat counterintuitive, but merely vaccinating a population doesn't *necessarily* raise their standard of living --- it may merely raise the *number* of people living in poverty. Africa is a prime example; it historically has been one of the biggest benefactors of vaccinations since vaccinations were first developed ... do most Africans now have a high standard of living? No, instead they have a massive population explosion but are still living about the same poor quality of life they did 100 years ago. In other words, 'well done, you just made even more poor people'. (PS I am speaking as an African, and have lived in Africa and worked with Africans my whole life, this is not just armchair rubbish.)
Bill Gates seems to genuinely mean well, but I fear his efforts will just serve to further explode the population of people living in poverty, and then there'll be even more people that need to be fed that can't feed themselves. You need to also simultaneously educate those people whose lives you are saving, to teach them to run their own modern industrialised economies, and that is much, much harder than merely sending them a bunch of medicine or food.
I think if I had that much money, I'd rather create an investment fund for funding free-market entrepreneurs within poor communities who help build solutions to their own problems.
And it's hard to sell them Windows 7 if their dead too.
To paraphrase Anthony Burgess, "It's not good deeds that makes one good, but good intent."
And so what if he is doing it for the press? If he cures malaria, the people who are cured will not care why he did it. Viewpoints like yours tend to come from people who don't actually spend much time helping other people and haven't really thought things through.
Qxe4
You are insane. Really, get help.
I was going to explain how philanthropy really works, and then explain Gates' tax liability and the position that both he and Warren Buffet have about income taxes (that they both believe that marginal rates are too low) but you are in a bubble of irrational hatred.
No, Google donating $2 million to Wikipedia doesn't even come close to upstaging the enormous philanthropy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
But the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is not Microsoft, it's the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Wikipedia is an accomplishment of immense proportions.
For what is does directly as well as for the example it sets on what is possible on the Internet.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin have made a gesture recognizing this accomplishment, as the mission of Google shares a lot with Wikipedia's.
Kudos to them for applauding the work of a competitor. I raise my hat.
When Bill dies the foundation can be passed down to his children without any inheritance taxes.
In other words, the Foundation continues to exist, and would still be subject to the same legal requirements about what happens with the money as already exists. If you mean to suggest that the children could drop the cash on hookers and blow, you simply don't understand the legalities involved.
I'm a nature photographer.
No he complaining that Google is not being an adequate interface to the rest of the web because the only things showing up in his search are Wikipedia and link farms. This is like complaining about a car that will only take you to the library and stores, and not any other building.
Understanding is not a prerequisite of one's Internet voice. ;)
Unfortunately...
Remember to maintain your supply of
Although it wouldn't work as a straight tax shelter, I vaguely recall speculation when he first announced the foundation that it was intended to provide him cover to liquidate his stake in Microsoft. If I recall correctly, the foundation's initial endowment was a ginormous grant of Microsoft stock from one Mr. W. Gates. The intent was for them to liquidate it and use the proceeds. Now, the market would panic if Bill himself dumped billions of Microsoft stock all at once, but if a charitable foundation does it, the price is more likely to maintain since it's not a sign of trouble at the top. Then while the Foundation is liquidating billions, that would provide cover (and price support) for Bill to dump a few hundred mill' of his own here and there.
For this to make any sense financially, we have to posit that Gates would suffer more loss in price collapse from directly dumping his stock than giving away a huge chunk of it to cover liquidating the rest. I don't know if that's true, but it didn't seem like a completely-out-to-lunch idea.
-- Old Man Kensey
I see what you did there. Very nice.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
They just started a couple of years ago. So they are feeling around how to spend money. Who are the real players etc....
They have annual reports dating back to 1998 on their website. Last time I researched this, that equates to a bit more than a couple years.
Do I need a citation for this logic?
Remember to maintain your supply of
Since he said it was good only as a gateway to Wikipedia, IMDB, and similar sites for popular queries, that's very different that your characterization. Sure, its a complaint that, for any given set of subject matter, there one or a small number of useful sites, and lots of parasitic ones, but that still leaves Google as useful for searching those useful sites (especially when their coverage overlaps so you don't have to search multiple sites individually for the same information.)
Its more like complaining about a car that, when you are in a mood for a particular kind of food, there usually aren't very many good places to drive with the car, and most of the other places you could drive with it suck for the purpose of getting a decent meal of the type you want at that time.
To paraphrase Anthony Burgess, "It's not good deeds that makes one good, but good intent."
I care far more about the good deeds then about whether the person doing them somehow becomes "good." Whether Bill Gates is a good person hardly seems relevant.
I know, I know, but .. but http://xkcd.com/386/ :p
I'm a nature photographer.
According to Sue Garnder's email (she is the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation), the gift is "completely unrestricted" (which isn't common - many major grants are restricted to a certain use, e.g. ford, stanton gifts).
Except I know for a fact that for many things I am searching for the problem isn't lack of sites with the correct information. I will search for information about product x, and get nothing but sites selling x for the first three pages. I will try searching for "x reviews" or simular and get nothing but link-farms and very poor quality sites (stuff like about.com). I will then restrict my search to a site that I know about, and sure enough they have the information I need.
So it isn't that sites containing the information aren't available, or aren't being indexed, they just aren't being given proper weighting in the search results. That would be my two biggest wishlist items for searching - do better at filtering out linkfarms, and have a switch I could select to exclude commerce sites from a specific search. None of the other search engines are doing any better than google, but if there were one that managed to do the above, I would switch to it in a heartbeat.
I live in Africa, Malaria kills more people (I mean children under 5) than AIDS in a year in some places. Thanks to the B&M Foundation, free treated mosquito nets have been handed out to pregnant mothers. And thanks to George W. Bush, PEPFAR is doing wonders when it comes to AIDS!
silarulz!
Wait, the maker of Windows, Gates, plays Bridge?
Contract Bridge. It's not hard to google up references to it, e.g., http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-12-19-bridge-schools_x.htm
I'm a nature photographer.
The Zune and Xbox aren't half-assed, but they are defective by design.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is sitting on billions, but only spends 3% of their endowment in a given year.
This is actually a smart move - it ensures that it's unlikely that the endowment loses value (it only needs to make a 3% return to maintain value). If you're playing for long-term gain (read: make your legacy "philanthropist and nice guy"), you want to keep handing out money as long as possible. It's easier to increase the payouts later than to decrease them.
Note that this doesn't mean anything in terms of what they're using the money for.
IME, using the search options and selecting "Fewer shopping sites" seems to do a fairly good job of living up to its name, eliminating most shopping sites from the results. The only real problem I see is that Google's Search Options aren't part of the Search Settings, so while they persist as long as you keep the window open and keep doing searches in it (which, if you habitually open search results in a new tab to keep the search results list available like I do is pretty good, but not perfect.) If they would keep Search Options as part of the persistent Search Settings for your account, or at least provide an option to set the current Search Options as your default for the account, that would do a lot.
Is there anything they [Google] can't fail at?
The summary lists Knol. Recently I watched Wave flounder. You're being disingenuous to claim that all Google touches is gold. Their advertising revenues support a lot of their endeavors similar to how Microsoft operating system stranglehold allowed them to elbow their way into hardware and gaming. Impressive? Yes. King Midas? No. Infallible? No.
He's asking if there's anything Google succeeds at, and you're giving examples of things they've failed at. Did he mean to ask what he asked, or was he trying to ask "Is there anything Google fails at?" If he meant to ask exactly what he said, then your answer is completely wrong. The things you list are all failures, not successes.
As far as I know, Yahoo maintains a large set of Wikipedia servers all for free without strings attached.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_hosting
Yahoo has an amazing PR problem, for sure.
Of course; If you consider people thinking "Hopefully, my browser won't hit google analytics after this donation.", perhaps Google's PR problem is deeper. I am personally amazed that they didn't donate a single cent before.
Actually, anonymusing, YOU are the complete idiot...
Start with:
latimes.com/gates
There is much more, if you care to be informed and educated.
You are little more than an ignorant, uneducated shill, evidentally.
Could someone please link the the list of views that qualify as troll?
Here you go.
Who remembers the article that floated around about a year ago about how Google manually tunes their search results. One of the manual things that they check is to ensure that Wikipedia articles are top links.
No, I will not work for your startup
Bullshit.
Charitable foundations are a very well known trick for the super rich to avoid paying taxes. Instead they pay money to some entity they themselves control, to implement plans that they are in charge of.
Your name calling makes you out to be the one who needs a little help. I could out you further but I think you know what's wrong with yourself, or you have the chutzpah to think it's virtue and not vice.
...because they're a corrupt "charity" that is now in a prime position to control anything and everything they want online.
It can start by forcing the media to be reminded of Jimbo's indiscretions, and the infamous "essjay" controversy. It shouldn't stop there, though. There's always the "SlimVirgin" debacle, and some of David Gerard's creepy "hobbies" could stand to be brought to a brighter light.
"You could out me further?"
What, you think I'm on some corporate payroll? That is the most freaking hysterical thing I've heard in ages.
I reiterate: get help.
Yeah, I could out you further, Rob.
Nope, my name's not Rob. Out me to your heart's content. And then take your meds.
Wasn't wikipedia scheduled to be broke and shut down by now? Weren't they in serious need of funds like, a month ago?
If so, then Google did a good thing, regardless of what it thinks it might gain going forward. Maybe Bing will chip in a million, too.
Also, Bill Gates is not Microsoft. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that Bill Gates supports these projects from his own sallary, while Google used their shareholders money. I'm not saying either is good or bad, just that it is kind of an important difference.
No they can't but there is only so much money you can spend on luxuries for yourself.
Afaict for the really rich money is about buying influence. If you buy a significant proportion of a companies stock or provide a significant proportion of a charities revenue that gives you influence over how they behave. And afaict you can still do this with money that is locked up in a foundation.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
That's me. Mr. Ignorant Shill, Ph.D. Darnit, AC, you blew my cover!
I did not say GF was flawless. I said, "GF funds work all over the world in ways that have nothing to do with corporate proximity or pollution." If you are going to level criticism at Gates over its investments or its myopia on specific issues, then you need to widen your lens: many foundations have these problems. Hate them all equally, then. Don't let your distaste for Microsoft color your view. I've personally witnessed and worked with great projects funded by GF. Could they do better in their methods of business? Of course. But... is GF's billion dollars a year in grants helping people in serious, positive ways? Absolutely.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
I don't necessarily that wikimedia does not deserve donations, wouldn't donating to wikileaks do more good at this point, seeing as how their site has been down for some time now?
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jan/07/nation/na-gatesx07
Here be signatures