[WikiEN-l] LA Times article / Advertising in Wikipedia

[Tony Sidaway]

On 11/03/2008, Geoffrey Plourde <geo.plrd at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I can think of several reasons why the Foundation remains a non profit. If we switched to a Corporation, this would;
>
>  1) Remove tax deductible status (Think taxation, big time)
>  2) Undermine crediblity as a free compendium of knowledge
>  3) Create a big legal mess. WF would have to define stockholders which would disenfranchise several million users. In addition, these new stockholders would have a tax mess on their hands.
>  4) Open us up to SEC scrutiny
>

The GFDL means it's perfectly possible to dissolve the foundation and
sell off the servers.  Not going for a proper revenue stream because
you would actually have to pay tax on the profits sounds a bit of an
odd suggestion.

So the non-profit status of Google "undermines credibility as a free
compendium of knowledge"?  How does that work?  If I look something up
on Google Scholar or Google Books, how does this undermining happen,
how will I notice that it's happening?

Could you explain about the SEC?