The Wikipedia Threat to Google's Empire

Last month, Google accounted for a staggering 47.3% of all web searches, according to comScore. Naturally, Google's stock is following right in step. It's just off its all time high. However, for all the hype about Google vs. Yahoo et al, Wikipedia quietly looms as a huge threat to Google's dominance.

Google's value will only be upheld as long as it remains the relevance leader  - e.g. the quality of its search capabilities. This presents a dilemma. For starters, the Google search engine feeds on Wikipedia to supply much of its most relevant results. It even hosts Wikipedia pages. Meanwhile, Wikipedia is gearing up to challenge Google with its own search engine. And, with the launch today of Wikiseek, it becomes quite clear that you can indeed build a high quality search engine off the collaborative encyclopedia.

What's more, Wikipedia's rise is coming at a time when Google appears to be losing its focus on search. The company in recent months seems to be prioritizing the expansion its advertising empire through pursuits such as the $1.6B purchase of YouTube. Google feels like a very different company than it was just a couple of years ago when search was the focus.

Now Google releases products without any search capabilities whatsoever. Google Spreadsheets lacked search until rev 2 and Google Reader still doesn't have it. At the same time, Google's results feel increasingly littered with spam and irrelevant web sites. The ads it serves are often low quality too.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia, which turned six yesterday, is rising. The number of Wikipedians who have edited ten or more articles continues its hockey stick growth. In October 2006 that number climbed to 158,000 people. Further, media citations rose 300% last year, according to data compiled using Factiva. Last year Wikipedia was cited 11,000 times in the press. Traffic is on the rise too. Hitwise says that Wikipedia is the 20th most visited domain in the US. Let's not forget that Google was once this size too.

Google is surely aware of the dependancy it has on Wikipedia. Perhaps this is why it acquired JotSpot. They may want to have the bricks in place to build a rival to Wikipedia - if that's even possible.

As Wikipedia builds its search capability, adopts a WYSIWYG interface and gets easier to use, more netizens will get comfortable and become editors. Wikipedia's power will rise and soon it will become clear to all that it is an emerging competitor to Google.