18 February 2010 | Author: D. Warburton Search Copywriter

Google donates $2 million to Wikipedia

Google has donated $2 million (£1.3 million) to Wikipedia owners the Wikimedia Foundation, allowing the non-profit organisation to upgrade its infrastructure and boost traffic to its encyclopedia articles.

The Mountain View giant's donation was officially announced on Wednesday, and follows an equal donation six months ago from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar through one of his investment divisions.

Wikipedia currently hosts more than 14 million encyclopedia articles contributed by over 100,000 volunteer writers. Google's co-founder Sergey Brin has praised the free online resource, stating: "Wikipedia is one of the greatest triumphs of the Internet. This vast repository of community-generated content is an invaluable resource to anyone who is online."

ITProPortal.com reports that the software giant's donation was aimed at making Wikipedia "easier to use and more accessible." The Wikimedia Foundation is largely dependent on donations from users and businesses, and its current fundraising drive for the fiscal year 2009-10 has so far raised more than $8 million (£5.1 million).

The company's 33-member workforce accounts for most of its expenditure, around $3 million (£1.9 million), while the foundation's second largest expenditure is on the operating costs of running its website, roughly $1.1 million (£705,000).

News of the donation was first leaked by Wikipedia co-founders Jimmy Wales and Mitch Kapor on Twitter. The Wikimedia Foundation later issued a press statement that explained:

"This is the Wikimedia Foundation's first grant from Google. The funds will support core operational costs of the Wikimedia Foundation, including investments in technical infrastructure to support rapidly-increasing global traffic and capacity demands. The funds will also be used to support the organization's efforts to make Wikipedia easier to use and more accessible."

Google's support of Wikipedia is understandable, given the mutually beneficial relationship between the encyclopedia and the search engine. Wikipedia articles regularly place high in Google search results and are highly valued by users as a means of finding unbiased information on a wide variety of subjects.

Speaking yesterday, Jimmy Wales said: "We are very pleased and grateful. This is a wonderful gift, and we celebrate it as recognition of the long-term alignment and friendship between Google and Wikimedia.

"Both organisations are committed to bringing high quality information to hundreds of millions of individuals every day, and to making the Internet better for everyone."

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