Value of Wikipedia
High level strategies for computing the value of Wikipedia:
- Find the total “value of the internet” and multiply by the fraction that Wikipedia can claim
- Replacement cost if Wikipedia disappeared
- Using some guess like “each pageview has a value of 1 or 2 cents” and then multiplying by how many pageviews Wikipedia gets
- The total cost of running the Wikimedia Foundation as an absolute lower bound
Some quick calculations:
According to Akamai’s real time web metrics, there are something like 77–79 million pageviews per minute, which translates to 111–114 billion pageviews per day.
Wikipedia’s pageviews are available in a large table. In 2016, there was around 16,000 million pageviews per 30 days, so around 533 million pageviews per day.
Combining the two, Wikipedia is about 0.5% of total pageviews on the Internet.
How much do people pay for internet? From some random article, “the average cost of Internet among top U.S. cities is $38 a month”.
