Similar to agreements the US tech giant has made with European news organizations, Google has decided to pay Wikipedia for content that is displayed by its search engine.
The nonprofit organization that runs Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, announced that Google was the first paying client of Wikimedia Enterprise, a for-profit division it launched last year.
The commercial services will be provided without charge to The Internet Archive, a non-profit that manages a website called the Wayback Machine that archives screenshots of webpages and is used to correct Wikipedia links.
Wikimedia’s Lane Becker said in a statement on Tuesday, “We’re thrilled to be working with them both as our longtime partners.”
One of the most popular websites on the planet, Wikipedia, is updated by volunteers and supported by donations. It is free to access.
According to the foundation, the new commercial arm won’t alter this arrangement for individual consumers.
In its “knowledge panel,” a sidebar that appears alongside the primary search results, Google pulls content from the website.
A practice that has sparked criticism from Wikimedia was the fact that the source of the information is not always displayed.
Google has previously made grants and donations to Wikipedia.
According to Google’s Tim Palmer, “We have long supported the Wikimedia Foundation in pursuit of our shared goals of expanding knowledge and information access for people everywhere.”
The value of the Google deal was not disclosed in the foundation’s announcement.
By agreeing on a structure for the US Company to pay news outlets for material, French authorities and Google on Tuesday put an end to their animosity that had lasted years.
To read our blog on “Deepfakes must be tackled by Google, Facebook, and Twitter, or face EU sanctions,” click here.
