

Why cant Google acquire Wikipedia? - aitoehigie

Googles' mission statement is "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful". So I kind of wonder why it hasnt deemed it fit to acquire wikipedia? I kind of find Jimmy Page annual appeal for donations kind of demeaning for such a useful website. It would make more sense for Google and would be in line with their mission statement for them to acquire Wikipedia, rather than developing sites like boutiques.com (which to me is somewhat lame) and trying to play catch up with Facebook.
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treyp
Wikipedia wouldn't be open to an acquisition for the same reason they're
against putting advertising on their site -- it'd ruin their neutrality.

And also, IIRC, rumor has it Google attempted to acquire Wikipedia a long time
ago but was rebuffed for this very reason.

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smackfu
How can you acquire a non-profit foundation?
<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home>

Google could certainly just give them a lot of money, and possibly get a board
seat.

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amorphid
You buy the assets of a non-profit (I think). Only rule is that the non-profit
stakeholders can't profit from the sale.

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_delirium
The directors are legally required to act in the interests of the foundation's
charitable mission, though, so they could only sell the assets if they deemed
it to advance those interests. I could see selling non-mission-critical assets
passing that bar, but I don't see any way the Wikimedia Foundation could
justify jettisoning Wikipedia, its flagship project, as being in line with its
mission.

It'd be even more problematic in this case, because the Foundation's mission
statement explicitly promises to maintain these resources "in perpetuity",
which would seem to conflict with selling them to a third party:

 _In collaboration with a network of chapters, the Foundation provides the
essential infrastructure and an organizational framework for the support and
development of multilingual wiki projects and other endeavors which serve this
mission. The Foundation will make and keep useful information from its
projects available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity._

It's possible there's some legal wiggle room around that, but it would
certainly seem hard to justify.

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variety
Because Wikipedia -- to its credit -- has no intention of being acquired by
anyone.

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neilk
I work at the Wikimedia Foundation, and I don't find the fundraiser demeaning
at all. I think it's fantastic that Internet users across the globe are coming
together to support such a useful resource.

