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Yahoo offered both financial and technical backing Thursday to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written and maintained by volunteers.
Yahoo Inc. is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and resources to the nonprofit group behind Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, a Yahoo representative said.
Yahoo Search also is integrating Wikipedia content directly into its Web search results.
Over the next several weeks, Yahoo will roll out search shortcuts that display excerpts from Wikipedia content above regular Web results.
The shortcuts are already available on Yahoo Searchs French site, according to the Yahoo Search Weblog.
Yahoos sites for the United States, some European countries, Asia and Latin America also will add the Wikipedia shortcuts.
Yahoos financial donation and search-engine support represents the most significant contribution made to Wikimedia since launching Wikipedia in 2001, the organizations announced.
Yahoos support of Wikipedia follows the disclosure in February that Google was offering to supply servers and bandwidth to project. Neither Google nor Wikimedia have formally announced any specific donation.
As part of its donation, Yahoo is offering servers, hosting and bandwidth, which will help Wikipedia expand globally, wrote Wikimedia founder Jimmy Wales on Yahoos blog.
“Yahoos generous donation to our cause … will have a huge impact on our ability to get our message of sharing knowledge out to the world,” Wales wrote.
“Yahoos donation is purely charitable in nature with no requirements for us to show advertising, and no ownership or control of our work by Yahoo of any kind.”