Strelnikov wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2023 1:47 am
Nope, because Google and Wikipedia are joined to the hip via Google infoboxes, which heavily use Wikipedia as a source.
Agreed. One of the earliest "king's pronouncements" that Wales did in 2001 was promulgate a
"What Google Liked" list. Wiki-pooters continue to use and prefer the Goog for finding the "references" for their often-crap content. And in return, Goog has openly and slavishly supported WP and the WMF whenever possible. Larry'n'Sergey are two of the greasiest billionaires the Valley has ever produced--but few people realize it, because unlike Musk, they don't go around tweeting stupid things.
Do I really need to dump a list here? Very well.
2009
August 27: Sergey Brin and his wife donate $500k to Creative Commons.[24]
In 2009, Google books almost twice the revenue in the US as the entire music recording business.
2010
February 17: Google gives the WMF a $2 million "gift"[25].
During 2010, Google spends $5.2m in lobbying[26]. Opensecrets.org shows donations to Google's political action committee -- a "who's who" of Google top management. It also donates money to the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society. [27] "What most readers don’t know is that the Berkman Center and many of its leading professors have financial and personal ties to Google and other tech companies—ties that are not disclosed when these academics speak or publish, and that I discovered after auditing a class with Zittrain. "
2011
August 24: Google would have to pay $500 million to settle federal government charges that it has knowingly shown illegal ads for fraudulent pharmacies in the United States, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday. The fine was for ignoring laxer rules over several years for doing what SOPA would have allowed a court to impose at an earlier stage. As finally revealed in this 2013 Wired article, an FBI sting against Google's AdWords department successfully proved that Google ad-sales representatives would cheerfully assist advertisers in breaking the law. In this case, the federal government forced convicted online-pharmacy con-artist David Whitaker to repeatedly start phony Mexican drug sellers and pressure Google salespeople into helping him break the laws covering online prescription drug sales. It ended up costing Google a $500 million fine, the largest criminal corporate fine in history at the time, plus it forced a drastic change in how they sold advertising. Note this comment: "After announcing Google’s $500 million forfeiture, the US attorney for Rhode Island, Peter Neronha, told The Wall Street Journal that the culpability went far higher than the sales reps Whitaker had worked with. Indeed, he said, some of the company’s most powerful executives were aware that illegal pharmacies were advertising on its site. “We simply know from the documents we reviewed and witnesses we interviewed that Larry Page knew what was going on,” Neronha said. (Google has denied this, according to press accounts, and Neronha declined to be interviewed for this story.)"
October 4 to October 6: Italian Wikipedia blackout.
November 18: [28] Media announce that Google's Sergey Brin has donated half a million dollars to Wikipedia.
December 9: Creative Commons board meeting [29]. But who attended? (Note that board member Esther Wojcicki is the mother of Susan, a senior VP at Google, and Anne, who is married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The first dedicated set of Google servers were set up in Susan's garage in Menlo Park.)[1]
December 10: Jimbo Wales first raises the topic of an anti-SOPA blackout on Wikipedia.
December 14, 2011 Joint open letter denouncing SOPA by Brin, Wales and others around December 14.
And on and on. Not to mention the "special treatment" Google employees and management receive in their WP biographies.
