14 million dollars is not very much, as it's one of the largest websites around. Most large websites are backed by companies that make a lot of money and can easily have a huge staff improving the technology; this is not really the case with the Wikimedia Foundation. Of course they could get better at transparency, but you have some details here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:2010-11_Wikimedia_F... http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2010-2011_Annual_Plan_Qu...

If you're annoyed by the ads you can always remove them (for that session, not permanently). I fully agree that they are in fact ads, contrary to Wales' statement. Within the Wikimedia community there is a (somewhat strong) consensus that not having ads by 3rd parties is necessary to remain indepenedent - there is a fear that such 3rd parties might affect the content in a biased way.