From the start, Google and Wikipedia are in a kind of tacit partnership: Wikipedia produces the information Google provides in response to user queries, and Google builds Wikipedia’s reputation as a source of reliable information. Of course, there were bumps, including Google’s bold attempt to replace Wikipedia with its own version of user-generated articles, under the clumsy name “Knol”, short for knowledge. Knol never took it, despite Google’s offer to pay the lead author of an article a portion of the advertising money. But after that failure, Google embraced Wikipedia even more tightly – not just by linking its articles, but by reprinting important snippets on its search results pages to quickly provide Wikipedia knowledge to those looking for answers.
The two have grown up together over the past 20 years, each becoming their own familiar word. But while one has turned into a trillion-dollar company, the other has remained a medium-sized nonprofit, depending on the generosity of individual users, donor foundations and the Silicon Valley giants themselves to stay afloat. Now Wikipedia is trying to rebalance its relations with Google and other big tech companies like Amazon, Facebook and Apple, whose platforms and virtual assistants rely on Wikipedia as a free virtual cradle.
Today, the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates the Wikipedia project in more than 300 languages, as well as other wiki projects, is announcing the launch of a commercial product, Wikimedia Enterprise. The new service is designed for the efficient sale and delivery of Wikipedia content directly to these online giants (and, eventually, to smaller companies as well).
Talks between the foundation’s newly created subsidiary, Wikimedia LLC, and Big Tech companies are already underway, said those responsible for the project in an interview, but the next few months will be to seek the reaction of thousands of volunteers from Wikipedia. Agreements with the companies can be made as early as June.
“This is the first time that the foundation recognizes that business users are users of our service,” says Lane Becker, senior director of the foundation, who is developing the Enterprise project with a small team. “We knew they were there, but we never treated them as a user base.”
For years, Wikipedia has provided a free snapshot of everything that appears on the site every two weeks – a so-called “data dump” for users – as well as a “fire hose” of all changes as they happen, delivered in one different format. This is how large companies typically import Wikipedia content into their platforms, without any special help from the foundation.
“They all have teams dedicated to managing Wikipedia – big teams,” said Becker, adding that getting the different content to talk to each other required “a lot of low-level work – cleanliness and management – which is very expensive.”
The free option, although awkward, will still be available to all users, including commercials. This means that the main competition for Wikimedia Enterprise, in the words of Lisa Seitz-Gruwell, the foundation’s chief revenue officer, is Wikipedia itself.
But formatting problems with the free version offer an obvious opportunity to create a product that is worth paying for, one tailored to the requirements of each company. For example, the company will provide real-time changes and comprehensive data dumps in a compatible format. There will also be a level of customer service typical of business deals, but unprecedented for the project run by volunteers: a number for your customers to call, a guarantee of certain speeds for data delivery, a team of experts assigned to resolve technical failures specific information.
In another break for a project like Wikipedia, which was conceived as part of the free software world, Enterprise will host its version of Wikipedia’s content not on the project’s own servers, but on Amazon Web Services, which, she said, will allow meets the needs of your customers better. In explanatory materials, the foundation strives to justify the decision and emphasizes that “it is not contractually, technically or financially obligated to use the AWS infrastructure”.
As these comments suggest, the Wikipedia movement, which proudly defended its initial Internet idealism, is struggling to discover how much it meets the needs of commercial giants with very different standards, not only about free software, but also transparency and “monetization” of its users. . However, foundation officials who conduct the Enterprise project argue that Wikipedia would be foolish to part with large companies, as they provide the basic means for people to read their articles.