Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-06-26/News from the WMF


 *  This article was first published on June 21, 2022 in Wikimedia Foundation News with the title Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as its first customers; allows new customers to self sign-up for free trials, CC-BY-SA 3.0

Wikimedia Enterprise, a first-of-its-kind commercial product designed for companies that reuse and source Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects at a high volume, today announced its first customers: multinational technology company Google and nonprofit digital library Internet Archive. Wikimedia Enterprise was recently launched by the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, as an opt-in product. Starting today, it also offers a free trial account to new users who can self sign-up to better assess their needs with the product.

As Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects continue to grow, knowledge from Wikimedia sites is increasingly being used to power other websites and products. Wikimedia Enterprise was designed to make it easier for these entities to package and share Wikimedia content at scale in ways that best suit their needs: from an educational company looking to integrate a wide variety of verified facts into their online curricula, to an artificial intelligence startup that needs access to a vast set of accurate data in order to train their systems. Wikimedia Enterprise provides a feed of real-time content updates on Wikimedia projects, guaranteed uptime, and other system requirements that extend beyond what is freely available in publicly-available APIs and data dumps.

"Wikimedia Enterprise is designed to meet a variety of content reuse and sourcing needs, and our first two customers are a key example of this. Google and Internet Archive leverage Wikimedia content in very distinct ways, whether it’s to help power a portion of knowledge panel results or preserve citations on Wikipedia," said Lane Becker, Senior Director of Earned Revenue at the Wikimedia Foundation. "We’re thrilled to be working with them both as our longtime partners, and their insights have been critical to build a compelling product that will be useful for many different kinds of organizations."

Organizations and companies of any size can access Wikimedia Enterprise offerings with dedicated customer-support and Service Level Agreements, at a variable price based on their volume of use. Interested companies can now sign up on the website for a free trial account which offers 10,000 on-demand requests and unlimited access to a 30-day Snapshot.

Google and the Wikimedia Foundation have worked together on a number of projects and initiatives to enhance knowledge distribution to the world. Content from Wikimedia projects helps power some of Google’s features, including being one of several data sources that show up in its knowledge panels. Wikimedia Enterprise will help make the content sourcing process more efficient. Tim Palmer, Managing Director, Search Partnerships at Google said, "Wikipedia is a unique and valuable resource, created freely for the world by its dedicated volunteer community. We have long supported the Wikimedia Foundation in pursuit of our shared goals of expanding knowledge and information access for people everywhere. We look forward to deepening our partnership with Wikimedia Enterprise, further investing in the long-term sustainability of the foundation and the knowledge ecosystem it continues to build."

Internet Archive is a long-standing partner to the Wikimedia Foundation and the broader free knowledge movement. Their product, the Wayback Machine, has been used to fix more than 9 million broken links on Wikipedia. Wikimedia Enterprise is provided free of cost to the nonprofit to further support their mission to digitize knowledge sources. Mark Graham, Director of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine shared, "The Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive are long-term partners in the mission to provide universal and free access to knowledge. By drawing from a real time feed of newly-added links and references in Wikipedia sites – in all its languages, we can now archive more of the Web more quickly and reliably."

Wikimedia Enterprise is an opt-in, commercial product. Within a year of its commercial launch, it is covering its current operating costs and with a growing list of users exploring the product. All Wikimedia projects, including the suite of publicly-available datasets, tools, and APIs the Wikimedia Foundation offers will continue to be available for free use to all users.

The creation of Wikimedia Enterprise arose, in part, from the recent Movement Strategy – the global, collaborative strategy process to direct Wikipedia’s future by the year 2030 devised side-by-side with movement volunteers. By making Wikimedia content easier to discover, find, and share, the product speaks to the two key pillars of the 2030 strategy recommendations: advancing knowledge equity and knowledge as a service.

Interested companies are encouraged to visit the Wikimedia Enterprise website for more information on the product offering and features, as well as to sign up for their free account.

For more information on Wikimedia Enterprise:
 * Website
 * Product specific explainers
 * Logos (SVG & PNG)
 * Homepage on wiki