Slashdot Mirror
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"!
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..
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.
Google has kept Wikimedia afloat with gimmicked page rankings and search results for years.
because Google makes $500m a year off typos...
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
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.
How is access to a useful resource "not a thing in return"? I donated to Wikimedia too, because I appreciate what they have created and use it frequently.
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.
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
"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.
I didn't say they had to buy every company who purchased a license. They'd have to buy the patent owner.
Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, etc. have a history of purchasing patent owners rather than attempting to license themselves from time to time.
If Google bought the patent owner, then Apple and everyone on that list would have to pay license fees to Google.
MPEG LA is a LLC, not a publicly traded corp. So I can't easily figure out with a quick search what the approximate net worth of the company is. But it might be a company that Google could purchase.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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.
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.
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.