Wikimedia Enterprise: Premium service has well-known customers

From now on, Wikipedia no longer seems to want to rely solely on donations. Instead, the Internet encyclopedia, which is free of charge for normal consumers, has launched its “Wikimedia Enterprise” service. The service is to make an uncomplicated and above all faster entrance possible to the valuable information of the data base for professional offerers. Among the first well-known and willing-to-pay customers is apparently also Google.

Large amounts of data in the shortest possible time

But what do the professional customers of “Wikimedia Enterprise” pay for? Put simply, they get even large amounts of data in the shortest possible time thanks to API access. The focus of the offer is primarily on larger companies that are looking for suitable information in the now gigantic online encyclopedia. Among others, search engine giant Google and the company Internet Archive are also involved. The biggest difference lies in the access to Wikipedia. Instead of public API access, which is free of charge, premium customers receive several different APIs. This makes it possible to access important data more quickly. They are also supposed to be always up to date and even contain changes that were made only a few seconds ago. In addition, Wikipedia promises an extensive service with “Wikimedia Enterprise”.

Google wants brand-new articles from Wikipedia

Anyone who types in a simple search term on Google will basically find Wikipedia among the first results. Particularly in the case of definitions, there is often no need to visit the page itself. To ensure that these so-called “knowledge panels” are always up to date, the premium service should be well worthwhile for the search engine giant. By the way, the whole thing should not be cheap for Google. Wikimedia has made it clear in an article in its own blog that it has already recouped the costs of the new premium service and is in the black. And Google’s costs will undoubtedly account for the lion’s share of the revenue. Here it becomes clear once again that Google is now cooperating better with other sources than was the case some time ago. For example, the search engine giant has only recently improved its cooperation with news sites.

While Google is paying quite a bit for the benefits of the service, the Internet Archive is getting off far more cheaply. More specifically, the NGO doesn’t have to pay anything at all for the “Wikimedia Enterprise” service. Wikimedia itself would like to thank the Internet Archive with this gift. Thus the NGO is supposed to have ensured that many thousands of faulty links were repaired in the past. Those who are also interested in the “Wikimedia Enterprise” can test the service in a demo version from now on. This is valid for 30 days and offers, among other things, 10,000 search queries. It seems that the popular online encyclopedia can finally pull its head out of the noose. After all, Wikipedia was threatened with financial ruin some time ago. Only recently it underlined its status again when it replaced the term “special operation” with “invasion” in the context of the Ukraine war.