Hi all,
I am delighted to tell you that Google is giving Wikimedia a grant of USD 2 million. It will come to us via the Google Fund at the Tides Foundation, which handles all of Google's philanthropic activity, and it is completely unrestricted.
We'll be putting out a press release tomorrow, but I wanted to tell you beforehand. This is really great news. It's important to us financially, of course, but I see it as equally important from a symbolic perspective. I believe that Wikimedia and Google are natural allies and partners --- we both want to help provide people everywhere around the world with information. It seems natural to me that Google would want to support Wikimedia's work, and I am happy they are doing it.
You probably know that Google and Wikimedia -–both editors and Wikimedia Foundation staff-- have, from time to time, collaborated on projects together. (For example, the Google team has created functionality inside the Google Translate Toolkit that enables editing and uploading of translated articles to Wikipedia.) This grant will not be channeled specifically towards Google-related activities: it will go into our general operating revenues. Having said that, I look forward to Google and Wikimedia continuing to do good work together.
The press release is below. It will go out tomorrow morning , but you don't need to keep this news confidential. Feel free to tell your friends :-)
Thanks, Sue Gardner
Wikimedia Foundation announces $2 million grant from Google Donation will support capacity investments in Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects
EMBARGOED UNTIL 8:00AM PST, February 17 2009
SAN FRANCISCO, CA February 17, 2009 -- The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia, today announced that it has received a $2 million (USD) grant from the Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund of Tides Foundation. 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.
"Wikipedia is one of the greatest triumphs of the internet," offered Google co-founder Sergey Brin. "This vast repository of community-generated content is an invaluable resource to anyone who is online."
Wikipedia founder and Wikimedia Foundation board member, Jimmy Wales, also commented on the Google gift. "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 organizations are committed to bringing high quality information to hundreds of millions of individuals every day, and to making the Internet better for everyone."
The two organizations have a long-standing working relationship. Most recently, Google and the Wikimedia Foundation have partnered to support translation of Wikipedia content into key languages with relatively small Wikipedia editions. Google's Translation Toolkit supports direct online translation of Wikipedia articles, and has been used by Google in Wikipedia translation pilot projects with speakers of Arabic, Hindi, and Swahili.
Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, offered: "It is wonderful that Google has stepped forward as a major supporter of a global, non-profit information commons. With this generous grant, we will be able to fund additional operations and development work to increase access and contributions to our free knowledge projects globally."
Wikimedia's support comes primarily from individual donations made by regular users of Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation completed its 2009-10 fundraiser in January. During the drive, 240,000 individuals donated more than $8 million, representing three quarters of its planned revenue for the fiscal year.
That is amazing! Congrats guys! It actually seems quite surprising to me to see such a large gift be totally unrestricted when most gifts of this size always seem to have ifs/ands or butts attached.
User:Jamesofur James Alexander james.alexander@rochester.edu jamesofur@gmail.com 100 gmail invites and no one to give them to :( let me know if you want one :)
On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 9:27 PM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
I am delighted to tell you that Google is giving Wikimedia a grant of USD 2 million. It will come to us via the Google Fund at the Tides Foundation, which handles all of Google's philanthropic activity, and it is completely unrestricted.
We'll be putting out a press release tomorrow, but I wanted to tell you beforehand. This is really great news. It's important to us financially, of course, but I see it as equally important from a symbolic perspective. I believe that Wikimedia and Google are natural allies and partners --- we both want to help provide people everywhere around the world with information. It seems natural to me that Google would want to support Wikimedia's work, and I am happy they are doing it.
You probably know that Google and Wikimedia -–both editors and Wikimedia Foundation staff-- have, from time to time, collaborated on projects together. (For example, the Google team has created functionality inside the Google Translate Toolkit that enables editing and uploading of translated articles to Wikipedia.) This grant will not be channeled specifically towards Google-related activities: it will go into our general operating revenues. Having said that, I look forward to Google and Wikimedia continuing to do good work together.
The press release is below. It will go out tomorrow morning , but you don't need to keep this news confidential. Feel free to tell your friends :-)
Thanks, Sue Gardner
Wikimedia Foundation announces $2 million grant from Google Donation will support capacity investments in Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects
EMBARGOED UNTIL 8:00AM PST, February 17 2009
SAN FRANCISCO, CA February 17, 2009 -- The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia, today announced that it has received a $2 million (USD) grant from the Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund of Tides Foundation. 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.
"Wikipedia is one of the greatest triumphs of the internet," offered Google co-founder Sergey Brin. "This vast repository of community-generated content is an invaluable resource to anyone who is online."
Wikipedia founder and Wikimedia Foundation board member, Jimmy Wales, also commented on the Google gift. "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 organizations are committed to bringing high quality information to hundreds of millions of individuals every day, and to making the Internet better for everyone."
The two organizations have a long-standing working relationship. Most recently, Google and the Wikimedia Foundation have partnered to support translation of Wikipedia content into key languages with relatively small Wikipedia editions. Google's Translation Toolkit supports direct online translation of Wikipedia articles, and has been used by Google in Wikipedia translation pilot projects with speakers of Arabic, Hindi, and Swahili.
Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, offered: "It is wonderful that Google has stepped forward as a major supporter of a global, non-profit information commons. With this generous grant, we will be able to fund additional operations and development work to increase access and contributions to our free knowledge projects globally."
Wikimedia's support comes primarily from individual donations made by regular users of Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation completed its 2009-10 fundraiser in January. During the drive, 240,000 individuals donated more than $8 million, representing three quarters of its planned revenue for the fiscal year.
-- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office 415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 17 February 2010 02:37, James Alexander jamesofur@gmail.com wrote:
That is amazing! Congrats guys! It actually seems quite surprising to me to see such a large gift be totally unrestricted when most gifts of this size always seem to have ifs/ands or butts attached.
I agree, this is fantastic news, especially because it is unrestricted. Large unrestricted grants are a great way to diversify the Foundation's revenue sources, which significantly improves the Foundation's sustainability.
WOW Overwhelming!!!
2010/2/16 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com
On 17 February 2010 02:37, James Alexander jamesofur@gmail.com wrote:
That is amazing! Congrats guys! It actually seems quite surprising to me
to
see such a large gift be totally unrestricted when most gifts of this
size
always seem to have ifs/ands or butts attached.
I agree, this is fantastic news, especially because it is unrestricted. Large unrestricted grants are a great way to diversify the Foundation's revenue sources, which significantly improves the Foundation's sustainability.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Chinese report: http://tech.163.com/10/0217/12/5VNMNPCH000915BF.html
Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/ My blog: http://shizhao.org twitter: https://twitter.com/shizhao
[[zh:User:Shizhao]]
2010/2/17 Wilfredo Rodriguez wilfredor@gmail.com:
WOW Overwhelming!!!
2010/2/16 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com
On 17 February 2010 02:37, James Alexander jamesofur@gmail.com wrote:
That is amazing! Congrats guys! It actually seems quite surprising to me
to
see such a large gift be totally unrestricted when most gifts of this
size
always seem to have ifs/ands or butts attached.
I agree, this is fantastic news, especially because it is unrestricted. Large unrestricted grants are a great way to diversify the Foundation's revenue sources, which significantly improves the Foundation's sustainability.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- Lcdo. Wilfredo Rafael Rodríguez Hernández
msn,googletalk = wilfredor@gmail.com cv = http://www.wilfredor.co.cc blog = http://wilfredor.blogspot.com fotos = http://picasaweb.google.com/wilfredor/ _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Thank you very much Shizhao for sharing this. I find the text remarkable informative and precise for a Chinese online agency.
Ting
shi zhao wrote:
Chinese report: http://tech.163.com/10/0217/12/5VNMNPCH000915BF.html
Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/ My blog: http://shizhao.org twitter: https://twitter.com/shizhao
[[zh:User:Shizhao]]
2010/2/17 Wilfredo Rodriguez wilfredor@gmail.com:
WOW Overwhelming!!!
2010/2/16 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com
On 17 February 2010 02:37, James Alexander jamesofur@gmail.com wrote:
That is amazing! Congrats guys! It actually seems quite surprising to me
to
see such a large gift be totally unrestricted when most gifts of this
size
always seem to have ifs/ands or butts attached.
I agree, this is fantastic news, especially because it is unrestricted. Large unrestricted grants are a great way to diversify the Foundation's revenue sources, which significantly improves the Foundation's sustainability.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- Lcdo. Wilfredo Rafael Rodríguez Hernández
msn,googletalk = wilfredor@gmail.com cv = http://www.wilfredor.co.cc blog = http://wilfredor.blogspot.com fotos = http://picasaweb.google.com/wilfredor/ _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Congratulations to the foundation team for the work that went into this!
On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 9:37 PM, James Alexander jamesofur@gmail.com wrote:
That is amazing! Congrats guys! It actually seems quite surprising to me to see such a large gift be totally unrestricted when most gifts of this size
< always seem to have ifs/ands or buts attached.
It is rather amazing, and a lovely sign of support.
SJ, hoping to see an endowment set up soon
Excellent news. I'm a big fan of Google (not saying they won't ever turn evil!) and switching between Google and Wikimedia products/projects accounts for 90% of my time online. It's great to see them both in harmony with each other.
The question is, how do we thank the company that has everything?
I vote we remove everything from our Google articles regarding privacy concerns for one day and put a banner on the articles saying:
"Wikimedia Thanks Google with This Slightly More Positive Article Than Usual!"
And then tomorrow we just revert our own edits.
Does anyone have a better idea?
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 8:44 AM, Domas Mituzas midom.lists@gmail.com wrote:
Hello,
The question is, how do we thank the company that has everything?
We can thank them by providing better content to everyone. That is both what they and us want.
And making the API more awesome, which helps everyone. :D
On 17 February 2010 14:44, Domas Mituzas midom.lists@gmail.com wrote:
The question is, how do we thank the company that has everything?
We can thank them by providing better content to everyone. That is both what they and us want.
Indeed. Note, by the way, I believe we've previously received money from Microsoft Bing. (Who heavily link and I think mirror Wikipedia content in their results.)
- d.
On 17 February 2010 17:18, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 17 February 2010 14:44, Domas Mituzas midom.lists@gmail.com wrote:
The question is, how do we thank the company that has everything?
We can thank them by providing better content to everyone. That is both what they and us want.
Indeed. Note, by the way, I believe we've previously received money from Microsoft Bing. (Who heavily link and I think mirror Wikipedia content in their results.)
- d.
No in the results. Bing Reference is a wikipedia mirror though. Microsoft also link to wikipedia articles on multimap. Their representative use that to defend themselves against the that modern navigation technology was making people pay less attention to their surroundings.
Hoi, You ask for a better idea :)
Google just finished the Swahili Wikipedia challenge. Google very much wants to grow traffic, any traffic in African indigenous languages. Spending money directly on any language is imho a bad idea but I would welcome statistics that show what people are looking for in Wikipedia that they cannot find. When you add statistics on new articles that proved most popular in the last month(s), we provide ANY Wikipedian a mechanism to learn what articles make most sense to write and show what did best.
This will benefit all our project and the smaller projects will benefit most I expect. <grin> it is not even expensive to implement I guess. Thanks, GerardM
On 17 February 2010 15:38, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
Excellent news. I'm a big fan of Google (not saying they won't ever turn evil!) and switching between Google and Wikimedia products/projects accounts for 90% of my time online. It's great to see them both in harmony with each other.
The question is, how do we thank the company that has everything?
I vote we remove everything from our Google articles regarding privacy concerns for one day and put a banner on the articles saying:
"Wikimedia Thanks Google with This Slightly More Positive Article Than Usual!"
And then tomorrow we just revert our own edits.
Does anyone have a better idea?
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 9:38 AM, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
The question is, how do we thank the company that has everything?
The prior question is, where did the money come from? I can't seem to figure out what the Google Fund at the Tides Foundation is...
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 2:51 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
The prior question is, where did the money come from? I can't seem to figure out what the Google Fund at the Tides Foundation is...
It does seem slightly opaque.
A small amount of digging suggests that Google gives money to here:
http://www.tides.org/index.php
...which then releases it again on Google's say so. Maybe. My only evidence for this is really:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donor_advised_fund
"Tides Foundation offers donor advised funds and other grantmaking vehicles as well as professional philanthropic advice, institutional regranting services, comprehensive grants management and much more."
On Feb 17, 2010, at 10:12 AM, Bod Notbod wrote:
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 2:51 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
The prior question is, where did the money come from? I can't seem to figure out what the Google Fund at the Tides Foundation is...
It does seem slightly opaque.
A small amount of digging suggests that Google gives money to here:
http://www.tides.org/index.php
...which then releases it again on Google's say so. Maybe. My only evidence for this is really:
This response is drawn from my previous knowledge of the Tides Foundation, and no particular knowledge of how Google is using them:
In my experience in the past, the Tides Foundation manages a charitable fund for an entity. Essentially, the entity gives money to this fund, and then says "Hey, these people are doing good work, let's help them do more of it..."; Tides then goes through and handles the legal due diligence and the paperworky stuff that no one really wants to do. :-)
Philippe
On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 6:27 PM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
I am delighted to tell you that Google is giving Wikimedia a grant of USD 2 million. It will come to us via the Google Fund at the Tides Foundation, which handles all of Google's philanthropic activity, and it is completely unrestricted.
Wow! Many thanks to Google, and congratulations to Wikimedia!
-- Luna Santin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Luna_Santin
Yes, congrats! Awesome work!
I read that this morning on my phone in the news summary for the day during the subway ride to work.
Renata
On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 9:27 PM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
I am delighted to tell you that Google is giving Wikimedia a grant of USD 2 million. It will come to us via the Google Fund at the Tides Foundation, which handles all of Google's philanthropic activity, and it is completely unrestricted.
We'll be putting out a press release tomorrow, but I wanted to tell you beforehand. This is really great news. It's important to us financially, of course, but I see it as equally important from a symbolic perspective. I believe that Wikimedia and Google are natural allies and partners --- we both want to help provide people everywhere around the world with information. It seems natural to me that Google would want to support Wikimedia's work, and I am happy they are doing it.
You probably know that Google and Wikimedia -–both editors and Wikimedia Foundation staff-- have, from time to time, collaborated on projects together. (For example, the Google team has created functionality inside the Google Translate Toolkit that enables editing and uploading of translated articles to Wikipedia.) This grant will not be channeled specifically towards Google-related activities: it will go into our general operating revenues. Having said that, I look forward to Google and Wikimedia continuing to do good work together.
The press release is below. It will go out tomorrow morning , but you don't need to keep this news confidential. Feel free to tell your friends :-)
Thanks, Sue Gardner
Wikimedia Foundation announces $2 million grant from Google Donation will support capacity investments in Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects
EMBARGOED UNTIL 8:00AM PST, February 17 2009
SAN FRANCISCO, CA February 17, 2009 -- The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia, today announced that it has received a $2 million (USD) grant from the Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund of Tides Foundation. 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.
"Wikipedia is one of the greatest triumphs of the internet," offered Google co-founder Sergey Brin. "This vast repository of community-generated content is an invaluable resource to anyone who is online."
Wikipedia founder and Wikimedia Foundation board member, Jimmy Wales, also commented on the Google gift. "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 organizations are committed to bringing high quality information to hundreds of millions of individuals every day, and to making the Internet better for everyone."
The two organizations have a long-standing working relationship. Most recently, Google and the Wikimedia Foundation have partnered to support translation of Wikipedia content into key languages with relatively small Wikipedia editions. Google's Translation Toolkit supports direct online translation of Wikipedia articles, and has been used by Google in Wikipedia translation pilot projects with speakers of Arabic, Hindi, and Swahili.
Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, offered: "It is wonderful that Google has stepped forward as a major supporter of a global, non-profit information commons. With this generous grant, we will be able to fund additional operations and development work to increase access and contributions to our free knowledge projects globally."
Wikimedia's support comes primarily from individual donations made by regular users of Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation completed its 2009-10 fundraiser in January. During the drive, 240,000 individuals donated more than $8 million, representing three quarters of its planned revenue for the fiscal year.
-- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office 415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org