Blog Insights: Google Knol Battles Wikipedia

by Dan Blacharski

December 17, 2007 —

Google has come up with a more workable alternative to Wikipedia's approach of
creating content through anonymous committee. The search giant's new service,
Knol, hopes to cover all topics, but unlike Wikipedia, continuous editing and
revision by anonymous trolls, wannabes, policy wonks and nit-pickers will not
be allowed. And as anyone who has ever been party to a report written by committee
can attest, this is a good thing.

Jack Schofield in the Guardian agrees with this assessment, noting that in theory, the thousands of edits "are
supposed to improve the original. As a matter of observation, they often make
it worse." In fact, Jack makes another valid point, noting that Google didn't
attempt to buy another existing online encyclopedia site, instead creating their
own -- indicating that those that are already out there "are not doing the
job properly."

I've never liked Wikipedia, and wrote about this in my other blog
where I suggested that Wikipedia admit that its project is a failed experiment
and let it die.

A Wired blog
takes the viewpoint that Knol isn't a serious threat to Wikipedia, but brings
up an innovative idea -- that being, some publications actually have editors
and fact checkers, who enhance the author's and the article's authority with
additional verification. Neither Google nor Wikipedia does anything like that.

The Scobleizer
sees Knol as somewhat akin to Jason Calcanis' Mahalo, a people-driven search
that delivers more accurate results. Although Knol isn't a search engine, it
will naturally be tied to search engines, with the obvious goal being for the
Knol pages to rank highly in search results on various topics, and preferably
above the Wikipedia entries.

Salon's Machinist blog
doesn't think that Knol will mean the end of Wikipedia, rather, it will make
it stronger, since the Knol articles could, and probably will be, used as authoritative
sources for Wikipedia entries.

One of the biggest differences is that Knol will run author bylines -- real
names, that is -- and authors will benefit both through the exposure and through
a share of ad revenues. Good for Google for coming up with this! Enough with
the sites that run on free labor, already!

For more details about the Knol project, you can go direct to the source at
Google's blog.
Here, Google describes what they're creating and why. The goal is to create
a site that emphasizes individual authors, encourages the creation of authoritative
content, and create a large collection of useful information. Obviously, there's
a profit motive as well, as Rich Tehrani points out,
since there will be Google ads on each Knol page, and if Knol is a success,
Google will sell more ads. I don't begrudge Google their ad profits, and since
individual authors will get a slice of the pie, it seems like a pretty good
idea. And one of the things I like best about it is that authors are listed
by their real names -- giving Knol a much higher level of accountability than
Wikipedia will ever have.

ITworld.com