Google partners with Wikimedia Foundation to leverage its information in Search

Wikimedia Enterprise, a new paid service founded by the Wikimedia Foundation – the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia – announced this week that Google would be among its first paying customers. Along with Internet Archive, Google will use this opt-in product to leverage the knowledge found on Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects as they continue to grow.

The product was created to make it easier for organizations such as Google to package and distribute Wikimedia content at scale in the ways that best suit their needs. Specifically, it provides a feed of real-time content updates on its projects, as well as guaranteed uptime and other system requirements that go beyond what is available for free via its publicly available APIs and data dumps. Lane Becker, Senior Director of Earned Revenue at the Wikimedia Foundation, said the following regarding the partnership with Google:

Wikimedia Enterprise is designed to meet a variety of content reuse and sourcing needs, and our first two customers are a key example of this. Google and Internet Archive leverage Wikimedia content in very distinct ways, whether it’s to help power a portion of knowledge panel results or preserve citations on Wikipedia. We’re thrilled to be working with them both as our longtime partners, and their insights have been critical to build a compelling product that will be useful for many different kinds of organizations.

Lane Becker, Senior Director of Earned Revenue at the Wikimedia Foundation

Google and the Wikimedia Foundation have collaborated on several projects to improve global knowledge distribution. Wikimedia content is already powering some of Google’s features, including being one of the data sources that appear in knowledge panels. I am curious to see where this partnership goes, particularly how it can potentially improve Google Search in the long run.