User:Tyw7/Google

On April 1, 2010, the Google foundation bought Wikipedia for $2000000 The announcement, in true social media fashion, was announced via tweets from Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales and Wikimedia Foundation advisory board member Mitch Kapor. Neither Google nor the Wikimedia Foundation have made an official announcement yet — it’s supposed to come tomorrow.

History
Ever since the failure of its Knol project, Google had been eying Wikipedia for quite some time now. On March 31, 2010, Google announce its bid to buy Wikipedia for $1 million USD. After heavy negotiations, Jimbo Wales agreed to sell Wikipedia for $2 million USD. Jimbo says the merger is done so that Wikipedia can truly remain free for everybody. Now Wikipedia does not have to ask for donations from its members.

Criticism
Some famous tech organization complained that the move was done so as to increase the content provided to the Google search engine. Both Google and Wikimedia, the orginazation behind Wikipedia has both denied this claims.