Wikimedia Enterprise Announces Google and Internet Archive as Its First Customers (wikimediafoundation.org) 7
Wikimedia Enterprise, a first-of-its-kind commercial product designed for companies that reuse and source Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects at a high volume, today announced its first customers: multinational technology company Google and nonprofit digital library Internet Archive. Wikimedia blog: Wikimedia Enterprise was recently launched by the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, as an opt-in product. Starting today, it also offers a free trial account to new users who can self sign-up to better assess their needs with the product. As Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects continue to grow, knowledge from Wikimedia sites is increasingly being used to power other websites and products. Wikimedia Enterprise was designed to make it easier for these entities to package and share Wikimedia content at scale in ways that best suit their needs: from an educational company looking to integrate a wide variety of verified facts into their online curricula, to an artificial intelligence startup that needs access to a vast set of accurate data in order to train their systems. Wikimedia Enterprise provides a feed of real-time content updates on Wikimedia projects, guaranteed uptime, and other system requirements that extend beyond what is freely available in publicly-available APIs and data dumps.
Organizations and companies of any size can access Wikimedia Enterprise offerings with dedicated customer-support and Service Level Agreements, at a variable price based on their volume of use. Interested companies can now sign up on the website for a free trial account which offers 10,000 on-demand requests and unlimited access to a 30-day Snapshot. Google and the Wikimedia Foundation have worked together on a number of projects and initiatives to enhance knowledge distribution to the world. Content from Wikimedia projects helps power some of Google's features, including being one of several data sources that show up in its knowledge panels. Wikimedia Enterprise will help make the content sourcing process more efficient.
Organizations and companies of any size can access Wikimedia Enterprise offerings with dedicated customer-support and Service Level Agreements, at a variable price based on their volume of use. Interested companies can now sign up on the website for a free trial account which offers 10,000 on-demand requests and unlimited access to a 30-day Snapshot. Google and the Wikimedia Foundation have worked together on a number of projects and initiatives to enhance knowledge distribution to the world. Content from Wikimedia projects helps power some of Google's features, including being one of several data sources that show up in its knowledge panels. Wikimedia Enterprise will help make the content sourcing process more efficient.
Big deals (Score:2)
Oh, come on. Google doesnâ(TM)t need real-time updates from Wikipedia, nor would it care about their guaranteed uptime. Theyâ(TM)ve got plenty of servers of their own, access to regular data dumps, and no particular desire to amplify PhatDude420 defacing the article on high school algebra. This is a sinecure from Google, a way for them to endorse WP in a way a simple donation wouldnâ(TM)t. (And my guess is that the Internet Archive is getting access for about five bucks a month â" they
Re: (Score:2)
Meanwhile wikipedia will continue panhandling you every year. Though in their defense, at least they aren't spending it on crack, though I can't speak for their employees.
Though I wonder how long it will be before the wikipedians with the most experience points will start demanding a share of the commercial revenue?
Google a customer? (Score:2)
Yea, that doesn't sound nefarious at all. (Score:2)
other system requirements that extend beyond what is freely available in publicly-available APIs and data dumps
Definitely not IPs, userids, who is editing what and when from where. We pinky swear. Why the fuck else would Google be interested in something they probably already scraped for free?
Re:Yea, that doesn't sound nefarious at all. (Score:4, Informative)
Google displays a Wikipedia information box besides web results. What happened is similar to Google signing agreements with news networks to harvest news that they already could scrape "for free". Indeed these agreements were forced by legislation (in Australia and EU) but now the Pandora box is open so Google and others are likely to enter agreements with contents providers to increase their level of legal security.
Note that the userids and IPs of anonymous users can readily be collected by parsing the History tab. What they could not and still cannot is to uncover the IPs of logged users, for two reasons: 1. It's not part of the API https://enterprise.wikimedia.c... [wikimedia.com] discussed in this post, and 2. The Privacy policy https://foundation.wikimedia.o... [wikimedia.org] does not allow it (and there would have been mass resignation among Wikipedia editors if this would be allowed to happen).
Not "verified", only "verfiABLE" (Score:2)
The article implies that the content has already been checked against the cited refs before it becomes available to readers. But instead, the Wikipedia model relies on trusting that editors are faithfully writing what the ref says and then allowing readers who care to check it themselves.
Informative (Score:1)