> Google Inc. has made a proposal to host some of the content of the Wikimedia projects.
> The terms of the offer are currently being discussed by the board. The developer committee has been informed of some of the details via email. A private IRC meeting with Google is planned for March, 2005.
> Please note that this agreement does not mean there is any requirement for us to include advertising on the site.
An interesting proposition... But if Google wishes to get anything out of the project besides some warm fuzzies and good ink, I don't know if it's a good one. The Wikimedia project has done a tremendous job of instilling a standard of unbiasedness (for lack of a better phrase coming to mind) in Wikipedia, despite that the wiki format invites just the opposite. Cozying too close to what is forming itself as the next Yahoo! or AOL might bruise that a bit.
I think if Google were not allowed to advertise, the only real gain they would get is having even better accessibility to Wikipedia information, to link it into their search engine, and thus have more "pimp-power" and reasons for users to use Google.
On that note, add this to your addblock filter and never see Google ads again:
Google ads tend to be pretty unobtrusive compared to most others. I don't really mind seeing them.
It's interesting if you think about it, though. How might they go about that and what would they call it? Google Nexus? "Type in a term and let Google Nexus find out for you what the collective knowledge of the world thinks about it! Tag the "Bullshit" checkbox to unfilter the subconscious information!"
>>5
Let's see: They crawl the web. they have business listings, they recently announced that they would scan 7 million books from university libraries, only just recently started a big map so hey, it would be fair that they are trying to do where teenagers fail: knowing everything.