The Tech Giant Has Contributed More Than $7.5 Million To The Crowdsourced Online Encyclopedia Over The Past Decade.
Google announced Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that it would be making an additional $3.1 million in donations to the crowdsourced online encyclopedia Wikipedia this year, nearly doubling its total contribution over the past decade.
According to WIRED, Google has donated more than $7.5 million to the Wikimedia Foundation and its operational endowment that seeks to ensure Wikipedia’s long-term viability. It also notes Wikipedia editors will be able to have free access to several of Google’s machine learning tools, and the Project Tiger initiative launched in 2017 will be expanded and renamed Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia.
Project Tiger began in India, resulting in nearly 4,500 new articles in 12 obscure Indic languages. Now, it is being expanded to include Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, the Middle East, and North Africa.
Additionally, Google is providing Wikipedia with free access to its Custom Search API and its Cloud Vision API, which helps editors cite fact sources for their articles more easily. And, the Google Translate function is coming to Wikipedia, as well, allowing content to be translated to any of 121 languages.
The report notes that this donation is likely a “shrewd business move,” noting a number of Google’s products use Wikipedia content in “knowledge panels,” and for fact-checking on YouTube. The tech giant has also used Wikipedia content to train its machine learning algorithms.
