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How did Amazon come to get preferential treatment on Wikipedia's ISBN tool?
If you check out this link as an example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0...
How is it that Amazon is the only bookseller that got to be listed (along with Google) in the "Online text" portion of the tool results? Who developed that Special:BookSources tool? Who specifically determined that Amazon is the only bookseller that displays online text? Is Amazon the only online bookseller that features some previews of book text? It would appear not:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/From-the-Mixed-up...
Could any of this have to do with the fact that in late 2006 Amazon invested $10 million into Jimmy Wales' for-profit corporation, Wikia, Inc.?
2 Answers
- ?Lv 51 decade agoFavorite Answer
Well, Jimmy Wales is known to have scrubbed clean the wiki-bio (wikispeak: BLP) of a political pundit with a history of legal problems concerning stalking and harassment in exchange for sex. Accordingly, giving an investor preferential links from Wikipedia in exchange for $10 million for a related yet "totally separate" venture hardly seems a stretch. There has long been a culture of cronyism, wired deals and other questionable hijinks at the Wikimedia Foundation ("WMF"), owner of the Wikipedia domains. After four years of waiting, it should not be surprising that Amazon wants to start seeing some return on its investment in Wikia, even if it has to come through the "totally separate" Wikipedia, also co-founded by Wales.
To be fair, it should be said that this is speculation based upon the known history of venality at the WMF. Probably only a small number connected to Amazon or Wales will ever know for sure, unless some "disgruntled former employee" appears and spills the beans. Also, it is probably not true that the WMF is as corrupt or sleazy as the similarly unaccountable IOC or FIFA, but then the IOC and FIFA have had much longer to work at it.
Source(s): http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/27/w... http://allswool.blogspot.com/2008/03/money-for-not... http://www.examiner.com/wiki-edits-in-national/wik... http://valleywag.gawker.com/5021500/wikimedia-foun... http://valleywag.gawker.com/389055/why-sue-gardner...
