Opinion Column- Googlepedia: The End is Near.
By John C. Dvorak, PC Magazine (02.14.05)
Google has absorbed DejaNews and Blogger.com and is digitizing whole libraries of books, and is making deals with publishers. What’s next? “Google Inc. has made a proposal to host some of the content of the Wikimedia projects.”
Dvorak reports on the impact this could have on WikiPedia, the huge user-contributor encyclopedia.
His conclusion:
But let’s say that Google is as honorable as it claims and has no intention of doing anything more than making life better for everyone. I know most of the principals there, and they are as normal and sincere as can be expected. Nice guys, actually. But Google itself is a public corporation. It’s its own animal in that regard, with attorneys and bean-counters making the “nice guys” who run the place beholden to the mythical shareholders, who demand results and accountability. Maybe the nice guys do not want to create a situation that locks out the Microsoft crawlers. The needs of the corporate entity, though, demand it. Maybe the nice guys don’t want to take over Wikipedia and clean it up, change the way it worksÑruin itÑas per the lawyers’ demands. The corporation demands it. Those nice guys are not working for themselves any more. We always have to remember that. They are now guests.
Read the whole article, though! Great links and more information.
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