Re:Its assets? (Score 1)

Any non-retarded reindeer on Santa's sleigh would be able to fly. There's a problem in the premise. Calling an imaginary purchase and transition plan non-retarded doesn't in any way explain how Wikipedia could have any market value, or how it could somehow retain enough volunteer leaders once dedicated to the non-commercial purpose of the project to assure a critical mass required to maintain an open document against malicious or ill-informed tampering. The only thing that could possibly be sold that a well-funded entrepreneur couldn't reproduce on their own is the URL. There is no way to assure the goodwill of thousands of contributors would somehow magically attach to a string of a dozen characters.

If Google purchased the Wikipedia.com URL, the mere purchase would probably inspire a couple of well-funded forks, including at least one that would try to somehow step in to replace the non-profit ownership of an open-source encyclopedia. The division of participants would assure no one would have enough personnel to defend a wide-open edit process against vandals, which as I postulated earlier, would probably increase driven by a motivation that Google had somehow stolen property donated to a charity for non-profit purposes.

You can postulate all you want on Slashdot that Wikipedia has tangible value, but no working commercial property appraiser or financial auditor will publicly agree with you. Unless you can point to an offer on the table, all you have is a big fat imagination. The contributions have no value and the community of contributors is not a marketable asset.