In a rather extraordinary example of begging for money, Florence Devouard, Chairwoman of the Wikimedia foundation has told an audience at the Lift07 conference that Wikipedia has the financial resources to run its servers for another 3-4 months, and that without further funding Wikipedia “might disappear”.

Could Wikipedia shut it’s doors? Tthe site alone would be worth at least $xxx million, if not a billion, after all, there’s literally no better property out there when it comes to traffic and authority than Wikipedia. And whoever bought it would not only have an amazing marketing tool, they could even control the truth, at least as most of us know it. Indeed, the likes of Microsoft wouldn’t need to hire people to edit entries, they could simply pay the new owner. Text Link sales alone across the site would more than pay for the servers the site uses, tens of thousands of times over. I smell a begging bluff on this one, but Devouard did make the claim.

(via Via Digitalis/ SEO Black Hat)