Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Talks Google

Wikipedia founder and Wikimedia Foundation board member Jimmy Wales spoke with Bloomberg Television‘s Betty Liu Wednesday morning, with their conversation touching on Wikia, Wales’ new online company, as well as Wikipedia’s relationship with Google.

On Google and the $2 million grant The Wikimedia Foundation received from the search-engine giant, Wales told Liu:

We’ve always had a good relationship with Google. It’s an unrestricted grant, so I think they just wanted to give something back. Google benefits a lot from Wikipedia’s existence.

We have a strategic planning process that’s underway to figure out the future of what the foundation is going to be doing. We’re really focused on the languages of the developing world — that’s a really important thing to us. Our annual budget is $10.5 million, so it’s a charity, it goes into an operating fund to keep the site running.

Video courtesy of Bloomberg Television:

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