Google is not a nonprofit. We attract people who are altruistic in nature, they have no
intereest in making wealth for some corporation. After we decided what qualified as a
stockholder, it is likely that we would become a public corporation in some way shape or
form.
----- Original Message ----
From: Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway(a)gmail.com>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 9:45:37 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] LA Times article / Advertising in Wikipedia
On 11/03/2008, Geoffrey Plourde <geo.plrd(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
I can think of several reasons why the Foundation
remains a non profit. If we switched to a Corporation, this would;
1) Remove tax deductible status (Think taxation, big time)
2) Undermine crediblity as a free compendium of knowledge
3) Create a big legal mess. WF would have to define stockholders which would
disenfranchise several million users. In addition, these new stockholders would have a tax
mess on their hands.
4) Open us up to SEC scrutiny
The GFDL means it's perfectly possible to dissolve the foundation and
sell off the servers. Not going for a proper revenue stream because
you would actually have to pay tax on the profits sounds a bit of an
odd suggestion.
So the non-profit status of Google "undermines credibility as a free
compendium of knowledge"? How does that work? If I look something up
on Google Scholar or Google Books, how does this undermining happen,
how will I notice that it's happening?
Could you explain about the SEC?
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