On 4/10/06, Chris Jenkinson chris@starglade.org wrote:
Google has done good works but it makes me nervous thinking we may become dependent on corporations for Wikipedia's existence. Corporations are known to threaten the withdrawal of funds as punishment.
Wikimedia in itself is a corporation.
I don't see how a few google ads could threaten Wikipedia by withdrawal of funds. The ads are context-sensitive according to parameters set by the site owner. Many corporations would be very happy to see their ads in a pool to be selected by Google to show on Wikipedia, one of the most popular non-Chinese language websites in the world. If Google tried to be funny, we're big enough to take our business elsewhere. Actually, maybe we could run our own advertising system and enforce a noninterference agreement from the start. Really, Wikipedia is absolutely massive, there's no reason not to do this except lack of seed capital and political squeamishness.