by Angel Sosa

Created on: January 03, 2009

Does Wikipedia.com pose a threat to Google.com? This is almost a question of relevance. These two sites function in almost two different playing fields. Google is a MASSIVE search engine in which MILLIONS of people search secondly, a variety of subjects, all the way from 'how grass grows' to 'imagining the 10th dimension'. Wikipedia is an on line WIKI dictionary/encyclopedia. This on-line 'wiki' is a large collaboration of web pages, often created by users, which define/talk about a certain subject.

I have regularly used both of these websites for multiple uses: essays, daily browsing, informational search, and simply fun. Wikipedia has been a major concern from most of my former high school teachers and some of my college professors due to the simple word, "WIKI".

Wiki, as defined by dictionary.com is, "A collaborative website whose content can be edited by anyone who has access to it." Wikipedia does exactly this. Whether one creates an account with Wikipedia or not, he/she has access to read millions, if not trillions, of articles that define just about anything. Once the user creates an account, he/she has access create or edit any which of those articles he/she feels needs content enhancement or simply try to deteriorate the works of others. However the case, all articles are watched relatively closely for abused content and plagiarism. The articles written are required to have some sort of citation for factual backup of the content. While reading an article that's not cited correctly, if at all, an almost-warning message appears, which tells the user the article is not cited. From here, one may either trust the articles content, or create an account (if he/she doesn't already have one), log in, and either edit the content, or simply perform a search via a search engine such as Google to try and enhance the writing.

As a frequent Internet-user, I use Google as a search tool daily to find a website who's content is relevant to that which I am searching. If I type, "Learning HTML" around 82,400,000 hits are going to appear from an enormous collaboration of websites all found on the web; Wikipedia does not function as such. Google searches throughout other websites, Wikipedia searches within itself to find relevant content. If someone is trying to search within a certain topic, he/she cannot edit Google's search results.

So does Wikipedia pose a threat to Google? The two simply coincide on a large network of trillions of computers throughout the world simply enhancing one's ability to gain information on quadrillions of subjects. The two have almost no relevance to each other in terms of "a threat". Google has been on the web for years searching a larger amount of subjects than I would care to clearly define in one passage. Wikipedia has created an on line community of writers, scientists, politicians, poets, musicians, and more, to write subjects on: other people, places, buildings, and almost anything imaginable. Both of these web sites are continually growing daily. Google is adding more and more websites being created by the second, and Wikipedia is constantly being added to and checking its database to make sure that the majority of the articles written are factual.

Google.com is referring millions of people to Wikipedia.com to understand something or anything. Wikipedia.com is directing millions of people to articles which could/could not contain factual information. In turn, the cited articles are leading visitors from Wikipedia to other websites where information may/may not be backed up.

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