{"id":1001,"date":"2007-12-13T22:24:49","date_gmt":"2007-12-14T05:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=1001"},"modified":"2007-12-13T22:24:49","modified_gmt":"2007-12-14T05:24:49","slug":"google_knol_tak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=1001","title":{"rendered":"Google Knol takes aim at Wikipedia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Big news<\/a> out of the Googleplex tonight: Google is launching what appears to be a head-on competitor to Wikipedia. The company has begun beta-testing a tool, called Knol (short for “knowledge”), that will allow people to create articles about particular subjects and post them on a set of specialized web pages hosted by Google. Each article, according to Google engineer Udi Manber, “is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read.” That, obviously, perfectly describes what Wikipedia pages have become for a huge number of web searchers.<\/p>\n

The big distinction with Wikipedia is that Knol relies on individual authors rather than “the crowd.” Each article, or “knol,” will be signed and owned by the person who writes it, and articles on the same subject will compete with one another for viewer’s eyes. In contrast, Wikipedia builds a single version of each article in a communal way with many edits by anonymous contributors.<\/p>\n

Writes Google’s Manber:<\/p>\n

The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions. Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing. Knols will include strong community tools. People will be able to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on. Anyone will be able to rate a knol or write a review of it. Knols will also include references and links to additional information<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the ad-free Wikipedia has risen to dominate the results for many common searches, it has become a de facto competitor for Google (while also being a source of content for Google services like Google Earth). Now, the competition between the two web giants promises to become much more explicit. The success of Knol is, of course, far from assured, but the ability of authors to sign their names, take ownership of their work, and compete with other authors may well be a lure for many people. And, of course, Google is pitching the advertising angle: “At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads.” In contrast to Wikipedia’s pure “social production” model, contributors may be able to make a few bucks by writing knols – while also contributing a fresh revenue stream to Google.<\/p>\n

For the past year, Chief Wikipedian Jimmy Wales has been doing a lot of trash-talking about taking on Google in the search business. Now Google’s striking back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Big news out of the Googleplex tonight: Google is launching what appears to be a head-on competitor to Wikipedia. The company has begun beta-testing a tool, called Knol (short for “knowledge”), that will allow people to create articles about particular subjects and post them on a set of specialized web pages hosted by Google. Each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}