Google Announces Knol - Or is it Googlepedia?
It seems like every time I turn around, Google is launching something new. I already have problems finding their services.
Well, make way for another one. Today, Google announced the launch of Knol.
Yes, it does sound like a Wikipedia rip off. Yes, Google has a service for everything. From the announcement, it sounds more like, at least from this description, that Google is going to try and make a Wikipedia that has actual “experts” attached to the article.
The impression I get is that if you author a article, then you’re going to be the big cheese when it comes to changes.
The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content.
With Wikipedia, there’s been the widely publicized defacing of web pages, the problem there being that no one has ultimate authority, so anyone can change it. I wonder if Knol will have subject dictators who won’t allow changes because they disagree with them.
Of course it just opened up, but as of this writing, there are no entries for Microsoft, Jessica Alba, Gillian Anderson, Rick Roll, chocolate rain, or Apple. We’ll see how long that lasts.
I wonder if I could write a post about OS2, state that it is the best operating system that the planet has ever seen, and make sure no one can ever change it. Hmmm…
I’ll be curious to see if Knol gets the participation that Wikipedia has.
(I saw it first on Geeks are Sexy.)
Update: I already found a blog about "Writing great Knols" (I still don't know if that's a word)
Here's what some other bloggers are saying about it:
Knol’s Well: Google’s Encyclopedia Looks Cool
Google's (Wikipedia Killer?) now open for business: Knol
Google Takes on Wikipedia with Knol
Knol – More of Squidoo and Less of Wikipedia
Comments
According to this article
According to this article over at infoniac.com:
Mr DuPont mentioned that the primary goal of Knol is not to provide competition to Wikipedia but to serve as a main source of authoritative information that anyone can use to edit Wikipedia articles.
Mr. Dupont is Cedric Dupont, Knol project manager at Google.
But I have some trouble with idea of "authoritative" information in this case. How do we know these people are experts in the topic they're writing about? Did anyone check their credentials? Do we know the author of the article are even who they claim to be?
Another problem is that there is a potential there could be hundreds, or even thousands, of articles on popular topics. Anyone looking for information isn't going to read all of them to try to get balanced information. They're going to read only the top rated ones and leave the rest. But the problem is, the top rated articles in any topic aren't going to necessarily be the best ones. They are going to be the ones that agree with popular opinion, and popular opinion isn't always the best information.
That's some kind of double speak to me
I haven't read the whole artilce, but to me, that sounds like they are setting themselves up to be "better" than Wikipedia.
To Paraphrase: "We're not competition for Wikipedia, we're just going to have the correct information, and people can use that to fix Wikipedia".
Kind of like, "We're not replacing "product a", but once you have our product, you won't need "product a" anymore."
Hmm. I don't see it that way
Hmm. I don't see it that way at all.
I think they're positioning Knol to be a source for all of those [citation needed] notes you see all over the place on Wikipedia. Something to work in conjunction with Wikipedia, not in direct competition with it.
Anyway, Knol will soon be forgotten. It's cool now only because Google released yet another product, but people won't end up using it. Remember Google Base? How about Google Checkout? Or Google Notebook? Or even Google Talk? All of these made a big splash when they were first released, but do you now anyone using them now?
I don't. Knol will suffer the same fate, just give it time.