Archive:Press releases/Wikia, Inc. is not the commercial counterpart to Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation

There have been several news reports stating that Wikia, Inc. was the commercial counterpart of Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation, or that Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation were going to develop search engines.

Neither is true.

Wikia, Inc. is a for-profit corporation that operates wikis (a form of Internet sites) on a variety of topics. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit corporation that operates wiki with an educational and informational goal, the best known of which is Wikipedia, the Free encyclopedia.

Wikia and Wikimedia are distinct and separate corporations with no managerial links. The only relationship between the two, beyond the similarity in names, is that Jimmy Wales, founder of of the Wikimedia Foundation, is also one of the founders of Wikia. Wikia supports the Wikimedia Foundation financially through donations and will hopefully continue to do so in the future, but there are no formal ties. The Wikimedia Foundation is mostly funded by donations from users, and does not run commercial operations.

Florence Devouard is the Chair of the board of the Wikimedia Foundation, and Jimmy Wales has the honorary title of Chair Emeritus.

To summarize:

• Wikia is not the commercial counterpart to Wikipedia.
• Wikimedia is not developing a search engine and does not plan to.
• The Wikimedia Foundation, the parent organization that runs Wikipedia, is a nonprofit that runs entirely on private donations and grants. It does not run commercial operations.