Google.org donating $2 million to Wikipedia and offering APIs, other tools

After numerous appeals for funding by Wikipedia.org to users in torwards sustaining the service, the appeal has been met with a donation from google.org, if for nothing at all this donation should sustain the service for a much greater length.

Wikipedia is leveraged throughout Google’s products from Knowledge Graph panels in Search to Assistant results on Google Home and other devices. Google.org today announced a $2 million donation to the Wikimedia Endowment, as well as making Cloud services and tools available free of charge to the site.

The two organizations share the goal of expanding access to knowledge around the globe. For Google, this is centered around its Next Billion Users initiative to make products optimized for specific markets and conditions, like limited data usage. Another barrier is language, with Wikipedia this month integrating Google Translate into its article translation tool for editors.

Google made the Translate API free of charge for Wikipedia, with other projects designed to add more native language content in progress.

We will expand these programs with Wikimedia affiliates and volunteers to provide editors with resources and insights to drive the creation of new Wikipedia articles across 10 languages in India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and the Middle East and North Africa region.

Wikipedia is also using Google Cloud Custom Search API to help editors “ensure contributions are appropriately cited from sources” and the Cloud Vision API to digitize Indic language public domain books to make more diverse, reputable available sources for citation. Both tools are also available to Wikipedia at no cost.

Meanwhile, Google’s philanthropy arm is donating $2 million to the Wikimedia Endowment in order to fund long-term sustainability. In the past, Googlers have taken to individually donating to the Foundation.

This brings our total support to more than $7.5 million, which includes an additional $1.1 million to the Wikimedia Foundation annual fund during a special campaign last year where Google employees helped decide where to direct Google’s donation dollars.

This renewed relationship as of late comes as Wikipedia last year was not given a heads-up about YouTube using the service to fact check videos.

Credit: 9to5Google

Last updated on April 1st, 2023