Wikimedia Board considers proposal for Google to help host content
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A potential solution for Wikipedia's overloaded servers appeared last week, as news broke that the Wikimedia Foundation was in talks with Google about providing hosting services. Preliminary indications were promising, but no final agreement has been reached and is probably still several weeks away at the earliest.
The initial hints appeared 1 February, as an agenda item for the 7 February Wikimedia Board of Trustees meeting referred to "Hosting by Google". After the board meeting was held last Monday, the summary of the agenda reflected more clearly that this was not simply a theoretical discussion, but indicated that an actual contract proposal was being worked on and a private meeting was scheduled on the issue for 2 March. However, the information did not yet indicate whether there was any discussion on Google's part, or whether the Wikimedia Foundation was simply hoping to interest Google in the idea.
Participants in the meeting alluded to the proposal in discussions on the Foundation mailing list during the week, prompting additional questions about the plan. Wikimedia CFO Daniel Mayer said Wednesday, "The plan for Google hosting will greatly reduce the amount of money we need to spend as will other hosting offers." (Mayer later said he was not speaking in an official capacity.) In response to the queries that followed, Trustee Angela Beesley confirmed that Google had made a proposal to host Wikimedia content, but said she couldn't elaborate.
The Wikipedia community's other elected Trustee, Anthere, reported on Thursday that Jimmy Wales had met with Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page during a trip to Stanford, where he was a guest lecturer last Wednesday in a class taught by Howard Rheingold. She indicated that Brin and Page were enthusiastic about the Wikipedia project.