The Wikimedia Foundation is responsible for one of the most visited websites in history, Wikipedia, and we have often seen how it asks for donations so that it can continue to do the work it does, on a non-profit basis.
Now Wikimedia announced the first Wikimedia Enterprise customers, two well-known companies: Google and the Internet Archive, long-time partners of the Wikimedia Foundation and first Wikimedia Enterprise customers so they can source content.
Wikimedia Enterprise will offer a free trial account to new users, to ensure that organizations of different sizes and industries can self-register to access the product and assess their needs, but both Google and the Internet Archive have jumped ahead.
Wikimedia Enterprise was designed to make it easy for its customers to package and share Wikimedia content at scale in the way that best suits their needs. They tell us about two possible uses:
– An educational company looking to integrate a wide variety of verified facts into its online curriculum.
– An AI startup that needs access to a large set of accurate data to train its systems.
Wikimedia Enterprise provides a source of real-time content updates on Wikimedia projects, guaranteed uptime, and other system requirements that extend beyond what is freely available in publicly available data dumps and APIs.
Google will need the data to enhance part of its search engine results, and the Internet Archive to preserve citations on Wikipedia, two very different and necessary uses for today’s internet.
Interested businesses can now register on the website for a free trial account that offers 10,000 requests on demand and unlimited access to a 30-day snapshot.
It’s been a year since Wikimedia Enterprise commercially launched, and it’s already covering its current operating costs, with a growing list of users exploring the product.
