Google Takes on Wikipedia with Knol
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This is has to be the biggest announcement coming from Google at the end of this year. Google is planning to take on Wikipedia with their own project titled “Knol” which apparently stands for Units of Knowledge.. While the title doesn’t really say much about the project, but they are definitely trying to create a more accountable version of Wikipedia, that will be monetized and will also also feature in Google Search Results, giving Wikipedia a run for its money.
Google really is playing smart here, by taking on the weaknesses of Wikipedia and building upon its strengths. Wikipedia’s biggest weakness to date has been the ability for anyone to edit it at any time. Say if I’d go about editing a Wikipedia entry saying that Mac OSX has had the most amount of Virus Attacks on it since a decade, the whole world would read it before someone else would come and edit it. Atleast with Knol, If I wrote something of that kind my reputation would be lost, and I stand to loose some money too, because Google plans to share revenue with Authors.
Another big weakness that Wikipedia has, is its sole dependence on Google for its traffic. What If Google decided to put Knol Pages above Wikipedia in the search results, the traffic of Wikipedia would take a nosedive. I’m not saying that Google would do this, but it really is a possibility.
Well Google would take advantage of its vast community, by allowing them to comment on pages and giving it ratings. Think of Knol that combines the best of Wikipedia, Digg, Blogs, Squidoo and other media that has really changed the way we find information on the Internet.
Marshall Kirkpatrick calls this a “game changer” on Read/WriteWeb, and I too believe that Knol could be a big game changer if it could build a loyal community in a short time. Knol really is going to be game changer, and I feel 2008 is going to be the year when we will see the mighty Google take on Wikipedia.
The Question if Wikipedia would survive or not is a different question, but some competition is always good. Lets see what Jimmy Wales has to say about this.
View Google’s announcement of the Knol Project here.
5 Comments, Comment or Ping
Mark
Whatever this does with Wikipedia is unclear as of yet, but this clearly is the death blow to Citizendium.
Dec 14th, 2007
David Gerard
The PNG example (http://www.google.com/images/blogs/knol_lg.png) shows a CC-by-3.0 tag. As far as I’m concerned as a Wikipedian, that’s a BIG WIN for Wikipedia and what we do - making free content *normal and expected*. If they require contributions to be under a proper free content licence, then I’m a BIG FAN of this endeavour. I’ve already suggested on foundation-l that if Google commits to a proper free content licence for all Knol content, that WMF should publicly encourage the move.
Same reason Citizendium succeeding would be a big win for what we do - it’s not competition, it’s expanding the pool of unencumbered knowledge.
If they allow multiple competing articles on a given subject, I’m not so sure that’s a win for the reader. There’s a Wikipedia fork called Wikinfo.org (run by Fred Bauder, a highly respected Wikipedian who’s been on the site since it was called wikipedia.com) which also does this and has almost no traction. I think the Neutral Point Of View policy - as difficult as it is in practice - is our most important innovation, far more so than letting anyone edit the site. People don’t come to an encyclopedia for ten articles, they come for one that provides an overview of the ten. That’s what an encyclopedia is for - the ten-second or sixty-second or five-minute quick backgrounder. (I’m speaking here in terms of ideals of encyclopedia writing, and am painfully aware of how often we fail to reach it, but that is the compass we work to.)
Dec 14th, 2007
George
Google is the new devil of the software industry. This is clearly just more google hegemony. Whatever happened to ‘Don’t be evil’?
Dec 14th, 2007
em
-ยป”Don’t diss evil…”
Dec 15th, 2007
Mathan
It’s a good idea that is very usefull for all………..
Mar 7th, 2008
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