[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia struggles, Mozilla set for life?

[Daniel Cannon]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Jason Calacanis wrote:
> With the risk of sounding like a broken record... :-) Mozilla announced
> (confirmed) they are making over $50M a year from their search box while
> Wikipedia struggles over fund raising on a regular basis.
> 
> Some thoughts:
> 
> 1. Wikipedia would make $100M+ if they put on Google Adsense on every
> page--easily.
> 2. Wikipedia could let users choose to turn ads on or off.
> 3. Wikipedia would make at least 20M if Wikipedia used Google Adsense for
> just search (which, ironically is what many wikipedia folks do anyway...
> search google for site:wikipedia.com).
> 4. If Wikipedia folks were concerned about being beholden to just Google we
> could setup a system to rotate ads from Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. randomly
> (text ads of course).
> 5. If folks are concerned about the content of ads it is easy enough to
> block certain advertisers.
> 
> More here:
> http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/10/beyond_sustainability.html
> 
> Anyway, if folks from the foundation ever want help on these things I'm
> available to consult for free and have setup deals like these (i.e. between
> Netscape/AOL/Weblogs, Inc. and Google)
> 
> Thoughts?

Wikipedia is not and has never been about making money.

Wikipedia is an icon of the free media -- commercial ads remove us from
the free media, and make us quite the hypocrites.

Corporate subservience -- be it to Google, Yahoo, MSN, or any other such
organization -- calls into question every action of the foundation.
Strong criticism, and indeed justified criticism, will be levied against
Wikimedia for acting in its advertisers' interests.

This is not to say that Google is evil (although many would likely
assert that), but rather that their interests are not aligned with
Wikimedia's.

My five cents,

- --
Daniel Cannon (AmiDaniel)

http://amidaniel.com
cannon.danielc at gmail.com
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFHHn9dFRAT5u/mSaMRAjzGAKDDJWS/EruSfL5OAQXH9GBp2C0/pQCfUPEz
OaZIW2I0iyES/W5BMLKYFUc=
=b2rO
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----