Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin Gives $500,000 to Wikipedia

NEW YORK - A foundation created by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife has given a $500,000 grant to Wikipedia that will help fund the company's annual budget, Ars Technica reported.

The online encyclopedia holds an annual fundraiser instead of accepting advertising.

The grant from Brin and wife Anne Wojcicki goes to the Wikimedia Foundation, which began its latest annual fundraiser to support Wikipedia and sister sites last week, according to the report. The fundraiser will run through January.

The Wikimedia Foundation's total planned spending for the new fiscal year is $28.3 million, according to Ars Technica. Last year's campaign raised $16 million toward the foundation's $20 million budget.

"If everyone reading this donated $5, our fundraiser would be over today," a message on Wikipedia said. A personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, cited by Ars Technica, said: "Google might have close to a million servers. Yahoo has something like 13,000 staff. We have 679 servers and 95 staff. Wikipedia is the #5 site on the web and serves 450 million different people every month - with billions of page views. Commerce is fine. Advertising is not evil. But it doesn't belong here. Not in Wikipedia."
 

Email: Georg.Szalai@thr.com

Twitter: @georgszalai