Google donates $2 million and editing tools to Wikimedia

Google has donated $2 million to Wikimedia Endowment, a fund to financially support the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and other projects. The internet company now also allows Wikipedia authors to use some of its tools for free.

In total, Google has donated more than $7.5 million to Wikimedia over the past ten years. In 2018, the company transferred an amount of $ 1.1 million to the fund, following a special campaign in which Google employees could choose a charity themselves. In recent months, Facebook and Amazon have each contributed $1 million to the fund. In this way, the technology giants want to thank Wikimedia for the sea of ​​free information, which they also gratefully use.

Wikipedia authors will also soon have free access to a number of Google tools, including the Google Translate API and Cloud Custom Search API. This should make it easier for Wikipedia authors to create new content in their own language and to add correct source references. The search giant is also announcing an expansion of Project Tiger, a joint initiative of Google and Wikimedia to rapidly increase the number of articles in 12 Indian languages. The project will now come under the name GLOW, which stands for Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia, and according to Google, it will be followed up in the near future in Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, the Middle East and North Africa, among others.

Wikimedia Endowment was established in January 2016 to ensure the independence of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. The original goal was to raise $100 million. About half of that has been collected so far.