QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Thu 27th January 2011, 8:00pm)
I've heard claims here occasionally that Wikipedia could be sold off. Is that possible? Who actually owns it? What is it they actually own? Could anyone get their hands on it and make a ton of money from ? What would they be getting their hands on?
You have to identify what has value. The content is opensource, as is the site's software. You can grab both at any time and launch your own project. So they don't have any marketable value. The hardware is probably a few million, owned by the foundation.
What has real value is the traffic, but only in the context of commercializing it with advertisement and other schemes. Some have estimated that potential value in the billions.