more websites in English than any other language. However, my websites indicate that multilingualism is very much alive and the web may, in fact, serve as a vehicle for preserving many endangered languages. I now have links to dictionaries in 150 languages and grammars of 65 languages. Moreover, the new attention paid by browser developers to the different languages of the world will encourage even more websites in different languages."

A few months later, Robert Beard co-founded a larger project, yourDictionary.com, that included his previous website and was launched in February 2000. He wrote in January 2000: "The new website is an index of 1,200+ dictionaries in more than 200 languages. Besides the WOD, the new website includes a word-of-the-day-feature, word games, a language chat room, the old 'Web of Online Grammars' (now expanded to include additional language resources), the 'Web of Linguistic Fun', multilingual dictionaries; specialized English dictionaries; thesauri and other vocabulary aids; language identifiers and guessers, and other features; dictionary indices. yourDictionary.com will hopefully be the premiere language portal and the largest language resource site on the web. It is now actively acquiring dictionaries and grammars of all languages with a particular focus on endangered languages. It is overseen by a blue ribbon panel of linguistic experts from all over the world. (…) Indeed, yourDictionary.com has lots of new ideas. We plan to work with the Endangered Language Fund in the U.S. and Britain to raise money for the Foundation's work and publish the results on our site. We will have language chatrooms and bulletin boards. There will be language games designed to entertain and teach fundamentals of linguistics. The Linguistic Fun page will become an online journal for short, interesting, yes, even entertaining, pieces on language that are based on sound linguistics by experts from all over the world."

How about the future of the web? "The web will be an encyclopedia of the world by the world for the world. There will be no information or knowledge that anyone needs that will not be available. The major hindrance to international and interpersonal understanding, personal and institutional enhancement, will be removed. It would take a wilder imagination than mine to predict the effect of this development on the nature of humankind."

= Terminological databases

Some terminological databases are run by international organizations in their own field of expertise, with free online versions, for example ILOTERM maintained by the International Labor Organization (ILO), TERMITE (ITU Telecommunication Terminology Database) maintained by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), WHOTERM (WHO Terminology Information System) maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO), and Eurodicautom maintained by the European Commission.

ILOTERM is a quadrilingual (English, French, German, Spanish) terminology database maintained by the Terminology and Reference Unit of the Official Documentation Branch (OFFDOC) at the International Labor Office (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland. As explained on its website, ILOTERM's primary purpose is to provide solutions, reflecting current usage, to terminological problems in the social and labor fields. Terms are entered in English with their French, Spanish and German equivalents. The database also includes records for the ILO structure and programs, official names of international institutions, national bodies and employers' and workers' organizations, and titles of international meetings.

TERMITE (which stands for: Telecommunication Terminology Database) is maintained by the Terminology, References and Computer Aids to Translation Section of the Conference Department at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland. It is a quadrilingual (English, French, Spanish, Russian) terminological database built on the content of all ITU printed glossaries since 1980, and updated with recent entries.

WHOTERM (which stands for: WHO Terminology Information System) is maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland. It has included: (a) the WHO General Dictionary Index (in English, with the French and Spanish equivalents); (b) three glossaries in English: Health for All, Programme Development and Management, and Health Promotion; (c) the WHO TermWatch, an awareness service from the Technical Terminology, reflecting the current WHO usage, but not necessarily terms officially approved by WHO, and links to health- related terminology.

Eurodicautom, a multilingual terminological database maintained by the Translation Service of the European Commission, was initially developed to assist in-house translators. The free online version was used by European Union officials and by language professionals throughout the world. Its contents were available in the eleven official languages of the European Union (Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish), plus Latin. Eurodicautom covered "a broad spectrum of human knowledge", mainly relating to economy, science, technology and legislation in the European Union. In late 2003, the website announced the inclusion of the existing database into a larger terminological database that would also include databases from other official European institutions. The new terminological database would be available in more than 20 languages, because a number of Eastern European countries were expected to join the European Union in the near future, thus the need for more languages than the eleven original ones. The European Union went from 15 country members to 25 country members in May 2004, and 27 country members in January 2007. The website of IATE (Inter-Active Terminology for Europe) was launched in March 2007 as an eagerly awaited free service on the web, with 1.4 million entries in 24 languages.

= Wikipedia

Wikipedia was launched in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger (Larry resigned later on). It has quickly grown into the largest reference website on the internet, financed by donations, with no advertising. Its multilingual content is free and written collaboratively by people worldwide, who contribute under a pseudonym. Its website is a wiki, which means that anyone can edit, correct and improve information throughout the encyclopedia. The articles stay the property of their authors, and can be freely used according to the GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License).

Wikipedia had 1.3 million articles (by 13,000 contributors) in 100 languages in December 2004, 6 million articles in 250 languages in December 2006, and 7 million articles in 192 languages in May 2007, including 1.8 million articles in English, 589,000 articles in German, 500,000 articles in French, 260,000 articles in Portuguese, and 236,000 articles in Spanish. In August 2009, Wikipedia was among the top five websites in the world, with a total of 330 million visitors a month.

Wikipedia is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, founded in June 2003, which has run a number of other projects, beginning with Wiktionary (launched in December 2002) and Wikibooks (launched in June 2003), followed by Wikiquote, Wikisource (texts from public domain), Wikimedia Commons (multimedia), Wikispecies (animals and plants), Wikinews, Wikiversity (textbooks), and Wiki Search (search engine).