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

[Peter Ansell]

On 24/10/2007, Daniel Cannon <cannon.danielc at gmail.com> wrote:
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> 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.

Having a donation drive with constant banners once a year demonstrates
that it does cost money to run wikipedia, how free is it really? You
use free (money) and commercial (money) together instead of the
overall goal of freedom of information. Just one more reason why I
don't like the focus on the word free by FSF.

> 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.

Why is it classed as subservience to allow advertisers to pay for
something. Non-profit organisations have to make a living somehow, and
it would be much worse for a corporation to be seen to boss around a
non-profit organisation than the other way around.

> 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)