Wikimedia will launch a paid service for big tech companies

The Wikimedia Foundation is creating a new paid service for companies that draw on Wikipedia data. The foundation announced the news today via an article in Wired, and it’s planning to launch later in 2021. Wikimedia Enterprise, as it’s called, won’t change how current Wikipedia services work. Instead, it will offer new options for companies that use its content, a category including giants like Google and Facebook.

Wikimedia is still finalizing how Wikimedia Enterprise will operate. But broadly, it’s like a premium version of Wikipedia’s API — the tool that lets anybody scrape and re-host Wikipedia articles. Enterprise customers could get data delivered faster or formatted to meet their needs, for instance, or get new options for...

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