Wikipedia spends more than that only for "Donation processing expenses". Of course it is a nice contribution but, in my opinion, very small if compared to the huge value that Google is able to get for free. https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/2018-annual-report/fin...

I was going to be even more cynical and say that 3 million sounds absolutely pathetic relative to the scale of both entities, and given how important it is to the quality of Google’s search results.

I would be even more cynical and say that $3 million is more than enough to cover all of Wikipedia's expenses and that the rest is bureaucratic fluff.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3112115

To add to my own comment, this [1] was the submission that I originally had in mind. It was in the 2007-2008 operating year that Wikipedia's expenses crossed the $3 million threshold. In 2015-2016 the expenses were >$65 million. In 2019, they were $91 million. Remember that the content creators work for free.

The reports are available here [2]. Looking at the most recent report here for FY18-19, the amount spent on hosting is $2.3 million. That's less than half of the "donation processing expenses"!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14287235

[2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/

I remember when Wikipedia used to warn against donations from Google and the like and running ads because even if it didn't undermine their independence it would at the very least undermine the perception of their independence.

Looks like they're ok with it now though.

I suspect it won't be too long before they get used to this largesse and won't want to do anything that might jeapoardize it.

The difference is that google's donation is a no-strings-attached donation, whereas if they were running ads, Google could decide to hold their payout or serve hostile and invasive ads. Running ads on that scale equals leverage.

It isn't "largesse" because Google's donation is a small fraction of what they are collecting. It would be a concern if a large fraction of their income came from Google.