Organize the world’s information…

5 Comments

1. I read the other day that Eric Schmidt said Google doesn’t want to own the content itself, they just want to provide access to it.

   If they ran (a) wikipedia they would have an obvious bias towards its content.

2. great point! good post.

3. Maybe because there’s more than one approach to organizing the world’s information? Maybe because there’s more to the world’s information than Wikipedia?

4. The way I see something like wikipedia is that they don’t actually own the data, they own the framework for putting it in one place. Google certainly isn’t opposed to holding data. The search crawler uses more than 850 TB alone. (yowsa)

   My guess would be more of a financial consideration. Wikipedia isn’t exactly lucrative. Wikipedia is also doing a decent job in that space right now. Their data is spidered by google anyway, so they reap the benefits without having to hassle with the operational headaches.

   Interesting thought food. *burp*

5. Great observation, Chris. Looks like the comments brought up some interesting considerations as well.

   Mister Jason: Wikipedia could be VERY lucrative, especially under Google’s control — Adsense! If someone searches for encyclopedic information on a type of widget, companies selling that type of widget would pay dearly to advertise to that person, who is reading about (and thus expressing interest in) the product.

   There are a lot of reasons why Google should create a copy of or buy Wikipedia. There are also a lot of reasons why they shouldn’t. It’s up to them.

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