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

[GDonato]

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?
> 
> Best j

Personally, I really dislike the idea of any advertising on Wikimedia. 
This makes a fool of [[WP:NPOV]], [[WP:COI]] and related policies and 
guidelines. It should only be considered if things get extremely 
desperate. The advert-free site is refreshing and welcoming and that is 
something we should strive to keep, pretty much at all costs.


GDonato