Launch and early growth

The domains wikipedia.com (later redirecting to wikipedia.org) and wikipedia.org were

registered on January 12, 2001,[25] and January 13, 2001,[26] respectively, and Wikipedia was
launched on January 15, 2001[18] as a single English-language edition at www.wikipedia.com,
[27]
 and announced by Sanger on the Nupedia mailing list.[21] Its policy of "neutral point-of-
view"[28] was codified in its first few months. Otherwise, there were initially relatively few rules,
and it operated independently of Nupedia.[21] Bomis originally intended it as a business for
profit.[29]

The Wikipedia home page on December 20, 2001

English Wikipedia editors with >100 edits per month[30]

Number of English Wikipedia articles[31]

Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot postings, and web search

engine indexing. Language editions were also created, with a total of 161 by the end of 2004.
[32]
 Nupedia and Wikipedia coexisted until the former's servers were taken down permanently in
2003, and its text was incorporated into Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia passed the mark of
two million articles on September 9, 2007, making it the largest encyclopedia ever assembled,
surpassing the Yongle Encyclopedia made during the Ming Dynasty in 1408, which had held
the record for almost 600 years.[33]
Citing fears of commercial advertising and lack of control, users of the Spanish
Wikipedia forked from Wikipedia to create Enciclopedia Libre in February 2002.[34] Wales then
announced that Wikipedia would not display advertisements, and changed Wikipedia's domain
from wikipedia.com to wikipedia.org.[35][36]