Google is one of the first companies to subscribe to the commercial subscription service that provides The Wikipedia Foundationthe non-profit foundation that helps support and operate Wikipedia.
Wikimedia Enterprise enables customers such as Google to use and manage massive amounts of information
In this way the most popular search engine and the reference encyclopedia shake hands (upon payment of their fee) so that the former can have at its disposal the largest possible amount of information with the maximum update.
Through specially programmed applications, Wikimedia Enterprise allows the huge amount of information available in the pages that make up Wikipedia to be systematized, indexed and analyzed so that this information can be extracted in a coherent way when performing certain searches. An essential task for the reference search engine on the Internet such as Google.
Moreover, this service also allows editing the available information, so that what appears in Wikipedia always shows the most up-to-date information and the content is as rigorous as possible.
One of the ways in which Google employs this service is through the results displayed on the sides of pages with search results. In addition to the search engine, YouTube (belonging, like Google, to the same parent company, Alphabet) also uses this source of information to contribute to the fight against misinformation, conspiracy theories, hoaxes and fake news.
Tim Palmer, global director of agreements for the search engine Google, has stated that this agreement to pay Wikipedia for access to and management of this information is intended to to deepen the collaboration that they have been already maintainingalthough no further details have been provided as to the nature and scope of the agreement.
Wikimedia Enterprise does not offer much more information beyond the fact that its director, Lane Becker, recalls that this service is still in its early stages of operation and that while Google had so far made donations to the service, now a new phase has been opened as it is its first major paid client.