Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

/. had a link to Dvorak, discussiong the Google-Wikipedia "deal".

I just want to say, first off, to Dvorak that Google Groups is currently EXCEEDINGLY better than Deja News EVER was. I don't know where you get this gimped search thing. The fact that you can get RSS feeds of newsgroups, it has a better UI than nearly any NNTP client (web or otherwise) I have ever seen AND a good search is sauce for the goose. Groups, yes, incorporates the kind of functionality you see in Yahoo! Groups too, but that doesn't lessen it as simply the best Usenet client out there. I would also say that your lamenting of the decline goes to the nature of Usenet itself. Groups.Google filters spam on it's own, because the Usenet community did such a bad job of it. Certainly the comp.* and sci.* still generate more compelling content than I am ever able to consume. Let's face it, though. The Web killed Usenet. Webboards killed the likes of public company newsgroups, rec.games.*, and pretty much everything in the comp.lang tree.

Anyway, I want to talk about the fear of "GooglePedia". I think "GooglePedia" would be a great thing myself, in the same way I think "GoogleFox" would be a good thing. I do not think, however, the fear of the death of Wikimedia is warranted.

First, Google's productization could finally provide an answer to the great Wikipedia issue that the WikiMedia zealots have let fester: review. The great strength of Wikipedia is it's open nature. It is also its great failing vs. the traditional encyclopedia. If the WikiMedia people, in the name of their knee-jerk antielitism, don't want to set up a content elevation system for Wikipedia, so be it. Let Google do it. They have the money and the ability to put something like that together. I mean, isn't this the exact same model that RedHat or Novell or IBM take with other GPL products? Does anyone honestly feel that their involvement has been a detriment to Linux?

Secondly, Wikipedia, I would remind you, is a GPL/FDL project. Google certainly wouldn't be keeping their version a secret from anyone, and they would never be able to "kill" Wikipedia. At worst, you might end up with a scenario where the geeks use Wikipedia and everyone else uses GooglePedia, but (a) who cares and (b) I would say that Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Postgres/MySQL, Apache and countless other open source project out there are plenty of proof that it is unlikely from the get-go. If WikiMedia decides the free bandwidth deal isn't worth it, they can always take their ball and go somewhere else. The license is freedom, both for Google to do something good with Wikipedia, and for Wikipedia to tell Google to shove it if they want.

Lastly, I think showing that GNU-FDL and Creative Commons licensed content has real value and can be productized is something that is very, very important in the larger picture of our IP society. Letting someone with the brand and good will of Google carry that flag for a while seems like something that benefits everyone.

PS...

You know, I wasn't even aware of this -- mostly because I go to M-W.com for my dictionary needs, rather than Google, but...

Last week, I wondered aloud whether Google's switch from dictionary.com to answers.com for their "definition" links was driven by concern for their users or was just a business deal:

...

Marissa Meyer, Product Manager for Google, was kind enough to respond to my query about it:

This decision was driven off of concern for our user experience. We are not paying answers.com for this service nor are they paying us. They were willing to work with us and design a website that we felt represented an improvement for our users over what was offered on dictionary.com (no pop-ups, dense information presentation).

kottke.org

Curious, I went and checked out Answers.com. It would seem that are already redistributing Wikipedia content (properly tagged with license and source information, by the way).

The more I think about it, the more I think that the future of Wikipedia is as a base for value-add information services. If GooglePedia is in the cards, that would still be great. I have to wonder, though, where that would leave an Answers.com.