Wikipedia, the world’s largest free online encyclopedia undergoing a redesign, is unwilling to allow major technology companies to continue using all of their information for free to provide their services.
Wikipedia is free advice for every internet user
For this reason, the Wikimedia Foundation – the organization responsible for the administration of Wikipedia – has announced that it will start a “paid” service before the end of 2021. It’s called Wikimedia Enterprise and it’s used to bill companies that use its content. additionally to provide them with other services.
Companies that will be affected by this movement include Amazon, Facebook, and Google. For example, the search engine often shows information that comes directly from Wikipedia in its search results. So far I’ve done it for free, but once Wikipedia Enterprise is up you need to checkout. Like Facebook, which also shows your information in search queries.
The same will happen with the smart devices from Amazon, for example now Use “free” information from Wikipedia if you ask the clever assistant Alexa about certain concepts. In the case of Siri, Apple’s assistant, the same thing happens, and the Apple company also has to pay to use the information from Wikipedia.
Little is currently known about how this payment service will work. It is known that Wikimedia Enterprise will provide a kind of premium version of the Wikipedia API with which large companies can use and publish articles and content on Wikipedia.
Thanks to this paid version, companies can receive information faster or format it according to their interests and needs. For example, to adapt to the design of your tools and websites. That is, for standard users, Wikimedia has confirmed that they will consult Wikipedia or have access to the API will continue to be a free service.
As the foundation has promised, Wikimedia Enterprise will arrive before the end of 2021. It will be one of the measures to fund Wikipedia, a service that has had significant financial problems in recent years by relying solely on user donations. In fact, he even asked Facebook and Google for money to survive. Now calculate them for the usage of your services.
