Jimbo Wales said something along the lines of how Google needs Wikipedia to help insure that the Internet “does not suck.” Google has been elevating Wikipedia articles in Google Search results, on the assumption (usually an accurate one) that the Wikipedia article about random subject X will seem better to most users than random Web pages about random subject X. Speaking for myself, I greatly prefer to start by reading the Wikipedia article on a new subject than random Web pages, because the random Web pages have inconsistent formatting, and most make me feel as if I’m falling into the middle of an ongoing conversation. In contrast, the Wikipedia article has a consistent layout, it defines and introduces its topic in a predictable way, and it links to human-selected sites for further information.

Wikipedia helps Google Search work better, by giving a kind of “known quantity” for Google to return first for many queries. This in turn encourages more people to use Google Search more often, driving ad clicks. Google’s business model depends on the Internet not sucking, and Wikipedia helps the Internet suck less.

While Wikipedia does have a nominal workforce numbering in the millions, only a small fraction make extensive contributions (a core group of “serious” volunteers roughly comparable in size to Google’s workforce). This is not to downplay the millions of people making small corrections and additions from their areas of unique expertise, but to show that it’s hard to compare one Google employee to one Wikipedia volunteer. For Wikipedia to compete directly with Google, Wikipedia would need many times more volunteers, because Google employees are working for Google full-time, and Wikipedia volunteers work in their spare time.

Wikipedia does not try to operate like a business. There are no deadlines, only very weak mechanisms to pressure people to do things they don’t want to do, no guarantees, and so on. Google’s work environment is more relaxed than that of the traditional business, of course, but it’s hard to imagine a world in which nobody feels like paying money to get a certain result by a certain date. There will probably “always” be some demands worth paying for that won’t be filled soon enough by volunteers. Indeed, so far most open-source projects have not really innovated, but instead imitated and improved upon existing commercial products. Wikipedia, for example, is like an open-source Encyclopaedia Britannica.

I’d say what Wikipedia does better than anybody else is skillfully organize vast numbers of geographically remote volunteers, most of whom never have and never will see each other in physical proximity. Even Google, for all its technical prowess, still relies on the pre-Information Age model of employees physically commuting to physical offices each day. Given that transportation technology depends almost entirely on petroleum, and petroleum is running out, that means transportation will only continue to get more expensive, while computers and telecom continue to get cheaper. Therefore, the future belongs to businesses which tie their fate to Moore’s Law instead of to Hubbert’s Curve.

And even though Wikipedia’s leader is personally fond of jetting frequently around the world to hobnob with people, he’s more of a figurehead than a representation of how the real work gets done. Wikipedia relies less on physical travel to generate and move information than any business I have heard of. That factor alone positions Wikipedia to thrive in the future world where virtual mobility must displace physical mobility to an ever-increasing degree. In contrast, every traditional business must struggle to overcome its obsolete traditions, left over from the days when fossil fuels were cheap and seemingly inexaustible.

Google has many business ventures that have nothing to do with http://www.google.com, including hardware development… it has many sections, like an orange. While Google states one of their goals is to organize the world’s information, I think they also recognize that isn’t really their ‘business’ - the way they make their money. They create all of these other services and products and sell advertising as a means to that end.

Wikipedia is a vast, user-edited encyclopedia of dubious accuracy, which provides great recreational reading and possibly good launching points for research, but isn’t accepted as a reference by most academic institutions. You could call it an apple from the tree of knowledge, which may or may not be tainted.

The Internet public loves both, they both serve needs in a manner that is respectable. There is no need to line them up and try and declare them competitors. Perhaps it would have been better to argue that Wikipedia might be more long-lived, without using the word ‘competitor’ - although really, Google is going to be around for a long time to come, if only in the dictionary.