Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019
> <i>...zero-click results have cost Wikipedia’s English language subdomain tens of millions of organic visits.</i><p>> <i>...Google was able to steal over 550 million clicks from Wikipedia in six months...</i><p>"Cost"? "Steal"?!<p>This would make sense if Wikipedia were ad-supported. But Google <i>saves</i> Wikipedia money by requiring less servers to support traffic. And Wikipedia is <i>open content</i>, you literally <i>can't steal</i> from it -- being open content was part of its original mission statement!<p>I personally <i>love</i> it when my search results just give me the answer I'm looking for, so I don't have to click through to Wikipedia (or any site) and wade through a page to try to find it, and maybe it's there or maybe it's not.<p>The idea that Wikipedia's success ought to be measured in pageviews is <i>deeply</i> misguided. The more its content spreads and is reused across the world, online and offline, the better it is for humanity.<p>And to be clear, this certainly isn't any kind of "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy on Google's part. Wikipedia isn't declining or going away. Every time you need to read an actual whole article, you still go there. This is <i>solely</i> about convenience in getting quick facts.<p>This is <i>good</i> -- not bad, folks.