Just two days after Wikipedia’s eighth annual fundraiser kicked off this past Wednesday, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and wife, Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of genetic testing company 23andMe donated half a million to Wikimedia Foundation. The donation came from the couples’ charity Brin Wojcicki Foundation, which has also supported the Michael J. Fox Foundation researching for a cure to Parkinson’s disease.
Wikipedia needs donations in order to keep the collective information free for worldwide users since the site is not ad supported. That’s the trade-off for a site that operate without ads, the money needs to come from somewhere. Wikipedia is just a branch of the Wikimedia Foundation, it’s probably the most known among its sister sites such as Wikiquotes, Wikibooks, and Wikinews, just to name a few.
For a man of great wealth, $500k is just chump change. The founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales wrote on the site ‘if everyone reading this donated $5, our fundraiser would be over today.’ Brin Wojcicki Foundation did just that.
