Google Commits $3.1 Million and Free Cloud APIs To Wikimedia (venturebeat.com)

Google is expanding its support of Wikimedia, the parent company of Wikipedia, as the search giant chases the next billion users. From a report: At World Economic Forum this week, Google committed to offer Wikipedia an additional $3.1 million, along with providing several of its machine learning tools to the editors of Wikipedia at no cost, the companies said. Google.org, thanks in part to contributions from employees, will be giving $1.1 million to the Wikimedia Foundation and $2 million to the Wikimedia Endowment, an independent fund that supports Wikipedia and other long-term Wikimedia projects.

As part of the announcement, the companies said they will be expanding Project Tiger, a joint initiative they launched in 2017 to increase the number of articles in underrepresented languages in India. They intend to provide editors with resources and insights to create new Wikipedia articles across 10 languages in India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The initiative is being rebranded as GLOW, which is supposed to stand for Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia.

Comments

Re:Good

[Penguinisto]

Worse - it means that Google is taking a bigger interest in Wikipedia.

Now whether it's just to get a fat tax write-off somewhere, or if there a strategic plan to slowly consume Wikipedia (by becoming its sole monetary/financial support), remains to be seen.

Okay, that was all tinfoil-like, but the possibilities still exist. But, like it or lump it, Wikipedia is the first place people go to get info about something, and Google goes out of its way to prominently display the Wikipedia page for whatever subject you're searching for. The growing 'integration' is becoming more of a thing between the two entities.

Now whether this is a good thing or bad, I leave to the reader... would it give Google control over what people learn? A little perhaps, but perhaps keeping Wikipedia independent enough to resist any such attempts isn't a bad thing, folks.