The official Google blog has a post tonight about a new project that's in closed, private beta.
The program is called Knols, or "units of knowledge." Knols participants will write reference pages on any topic, using a Google content creation tool apparently in the works, and those pages will be highlighted in Google search results. Authors will choose whether they want ads to appear and will receive a "substantial revenue share."
I think this is going to be a game changer. Check out this sample page below.
Competing Knols pages on the same topic will be judged by reader votes and the Google Search Quality process. There will be reader commenting, the ability to add additional information and more social features. It won't be a walled garden but will live on the open web. Attribution will be substantial and Google is presumably working with high-profile topic specialists on the Knol project.
Somewhere Jason Calacanis, his soul icy as it is, is aglow knowing that his Mahalo concept has been validated by a company that's arguably the most important in the last 100 years. Likewise, there's probably some melancholy toasts due at Squidoo headquarters. Those companies may or may not survive but the real battle will probably be with Wikipedia. Google-built pages may be the only pages that have a bigger advantage in search than the widely linked Wikipedia reference pages.
Update: I talked to Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki and on the Wikipedia board of advisers, today about Knols vs. Wikipedia. Here's what he had to say: "It's trying to set up an economy of writing and the web is a great place to try to experiment with different economies. Wikipedia has already succeeded with one, and these are two different styles. If Google intentionally diverts people from Wikipedia they would be doing a disservice to their readers. Most likely readers will have to chose between the two and Wikipedia already has a very successful brand." That seems like an overly optimistic assessment of the situation to me, but Cunningham certainly could be right. (Disclosure: Ward is also the CTO at Aboutus.org, one of my personal consulting clients.)
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this does validate the mahalo model, but since i'm assuming this would integrate with all of the other google services.
google has gotten trashed for not building a social network.
ladies and gentlemen, Google IS a social network.
Posted by: drew olanoff | December 13, 2007 7:37 PM
oops, i meant that since i'm assuming this would integrate all of the other google services, they'll be able to get an idea of whether the model works or not much quicker than mahalo can.
Posted by: drew olanoff | December 13, 2007 7:39 PM
I was about to say the whole idea seems almost identical to Wikipedia; however, Google certainly stands at an advantage. I'm curious to see how it turns out.
Posted by: Amy | December 13, 2007 7:46 PM
I love the idea-- and I think it'll be a pretty huge deal.
I kind of wish Wikipedia would sue them for using their 'monopoly' position to expand into other markets. Just to re-illustrate the ridiculousness of all the old MS litigation, with Opera still carrying the torch.
Either way, competition is great. Users for the win.
Posted by: Morgan | December 13, 2007 7:52 PM
This is just Wikipedia with authors. And because Wikipedia has so many issues of bias running in either direction on any given topic, I can only imagine the ridiculous number of knols that are going to pop up from professors at JaBumba State College on any one topic. Sure, the rating system will be helpful for weeding out the complete idiots, but what about a topic like, say, "Economic Growth in Africa" There are enough different threads of thought on that topic to fill a library. Putting all of those threads of thought in one place is far more coherent than allowing every economist in the world who thinks it could be useful and valuable to create his or her own knol on the topic.
Also, I'm sorry, but while Google's influence is undeniable, it's incredibly overplayed that Google is a brilliant company that changed the world. Google got incredibly lucky when Larry Page figured out how to do search best. But guess what - someone else would have figured out how to get good search results sooner or later and Google would have been beaten to the punch. Google is pretty much a fluke of Page's search algorithm and the discovery that if you do search right, you can make a ton of ad revenue from it. Google's business model is downright terrible - none of its other businesses make a dime. Has it changed the world? Yes. Is it doing lots of really cool things? Yes. But would someone else be raking it in if Google hadn't filled that void. Absolutely.
Posted by: Mitch | December 13, 2007 7:56 PM
I have to agree with Mitch. I am big fan of Google's products, and absolutely agree as to the profound influence they have had in the our sphere. However, I think the statement "...a company that's arguably the most important in the last 100 years" speaks more to a lack of perspective of the author than influence of Google. Lofty claims about direct information access, openness and so on are certainly valid references to a certain kind of influence, and may yet prove to be incredibly important historically. However, let's remember the shoulders upon which Google (and the technology it uses) stands. Moreover, lets qualify whom Google has influenced. Greatly important to a western, middle class public: absolutely. Beyond that...
Posted by: Tony | December 13, 2007 8:46 PM
I found the service login page for Knols as I was snooping around...
My post is here: http://blog.verani.net/2007/12/google-knols-new-service-login-page.html
Posted by: Ioannus de Verani | December 13, 2007 9:14 PM
I think you think too much about Google. Wikipedia is by far most effective in getting folks real organized content.
Google has been the eqivalent of an effective tag search so far (vs. Yahoo's categorized search). Far less accurate than Wikipedia, Google mostly caters to business search and such.
Wikipedia has become the center of the information world. In fact, for most useful terms, Wikipedia links are ranked in the first three. Indicating Wikipedia is a better first target than Google. Almost like people thought of Google vs. Yahoo five years ago.
This is Google’s reaction for not getting taken over wikipedia and related sites. Other companies have tried exactly what is being proposed here (like about.com with experts), and Google itself tried it along with its notebook concept a few years ago. That did not take off at all.
Maybe Google can just start to host Wikipedia - in fact someone was saying that there was a proposal on this.
Or better yet, Google can start to index the semantic web's xml rather than making a Wikipedia copy.
To call Google as the greatest thing that happened in the last 100 years seems a bit far fetched. I think Wikipedia was a far better movement (something that can get Jim Wales a Nobel Peace Prize or something at some point) in organizing all information by everyone - for the good of all, by the people themselves.
Against that, Google is just a temporarily successful search engine.
Posted by: Joseph Pally | December 13, 2007 9:18 PM
I don't know if this will be a Wiki killer or not. Wikipedia is already established in this genre already after all. Will be interesting to see how it works out though.
Posted by: Free Chat Rooms | December 14, 2007 12:35 AM
Dudes, this is BIG. Wikipedia is heading for trouble...
Posted by: Gunnar Andreassen | December 14, 2007 12:38 AM
I agree mostly with #8.
Posted by: Braydon Fuller | December 14, 2007 12:47 AM
This WILL take over Wikipedia.
Why? Because people like to express their take on things and Wikipedia does not allow that due to neutral bias policy.
Knols are very much like wikipedia pages that you "own" and will pull a lot of authors away from filling wikipedia pages.
By the way, Mahalo is a joke. Just tried it for the first time. Search page results with wiki dimension. Please.
Posted by: Jeppis | December 14, 2007 12:55 AM
Sweet !! I've been looking for something like this for ... like.... a long time. I always wanted a place to put all my misc knowledge so it can help others.
I'm pretty sure this is the next stop for porn. But, its going to help a lot of people anyway. :)
Posted by: Tech Roach | December 14, 2007 1:07 AM
Holy crap, we got competition now.
Posted by: max | December 14, 2007 1:21 AM
I dont think that this project would have any success, because wikipedia already has this sort of people who are willing to write something online.
Posted by: tom | December 14, 2007 2:05 AM
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. 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.)
Posted by: David Gerard | December 14, 2007 2:22 AM
Is is a wikipedia killer, yes but it will take time of about 1 year. And there exists a strong possibility of people forgetting wikipedia in long run.
But I can tell you one thing, there will a lot of copy-paste form Wikipedia to Google Knols.
Also expect Yahoo and MS to join the game it this thing succeeds only slightly.
For most of us now, google=internet now, for most of the practical purposes. This knol thing will make it more so
Hail Google!!!
Posted by: Varun Mahajan | December 14, 2007 2:34 AM
I don't believe so. If Google can do it, they would've never bought YouTube. I think Google can do it, but they still have long ways to go. Wikipedia can always add some new functions and wala, Google's playing catchup game again.
Posted by: max | December 14, 2007 3:34 AM
I disagree that this is a true competitor to Wikipedia.
If you read Google's announcement carefully, you realize a knol is written by a single author, whereas Wikipedia entries are written collaboratively and change as time passed. Plus, knols allow commenting and rating, which is not available on Wikipedia.
To me, knols are more like blogs, but with true simplicity for authors. No more setting up Wordpress, registering domain names, figuring out how to attract visitors, SEO, monetizing and the like. Total focus on what authors are good at: Writing.
An awesome idea, let's hope Google executes it well.
Posted by: q | December 14, 2007 4:08 AM
I understand (to some extent) the role of the author in the blogosphere. But I'm wondering, how its existence in collaborative projects (like wikis) will help aggregating information correctly. I find, that the strength of wikis and such similar projects is indirect control, self-organization, diversity and independence. The existence of an author(ity) raises this strength.
Posted by: robojiannis | December 14, 2007 4:17 AM
This will kill Wikipedia. Google controls who gets to the top of the search results for the vast majority of end users searches. Wikipedia often does not get the best writers or the most knowledgeable "experts". Google offering a profit sharing system will bring in a higher quality of writer nine times out of ten.
That and Wikipedia has been falling apart for 18 months now. I will use it if I want to look up Family Guy episodes, but when I am after real facts, I always skip Wikipedia in the Google results.
Posted by: NotSure | December 14, 2007 4:20 AM
This could be a good complement to Wikipedia : a place for different authors to express their personal strongly biased views of the same subject.
Does anybody know what license the content will be under ? If it is a free license, then it would be a good upstream source for Wikipedia articles material.
Even if the license is not free, the noosphere will still be enriched by the contributions of people who previously were deterred by the technical frictions of tooling up.
Posted by: Jean-Marc Liotier | December 14, 2007 4:55 AM
This will definitely be BETTER than wikipedia.
Posted by: CCNA Discovery | December 14, 2007 4:59 AM
Wikipedia (50M+ uniques) tends to be result #2 or #3 for A LOT of Google search results, it makes sense for Google to want to keep some of those people within the Google ecosystem.
Traffic chart: http://hepguru.com/blog/2007/12/14/wikipedia-stats-unique-visitors-knols/
Posted by: Jay Meattle | December 14, 2007 5:26 AM
Knol is Wikipedia by Google. But it has better features for author to monetize written page, related search box and Peer review widget.
I think it is great to have a better version of wikipedia and I am sure Google will do greater job in this area.
I would certainly not advocate the monopoly, but you got to be smarter and quicker to kill the beast, other they stories will repeat itself.
Posted by: Saurabh Kaushik | December 14, 2007 5:31 AM
Google wants to be a monopoly, just because they are sitting on a huge pile of cash they want to own and control every thing on this earth. Wikipedia is one of the best sources of information and has been successful largely due to its open source nature, non-commercialized way of collecting information and ad (distraction) free knowledge. Instead of supporting wikipedia they are trying to kill soul of internet.
Posted by: Raj | December 14, 2007 6:48 AM
Anyone else sick of http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=466&doc_id=141218&
">Google singing their own praise?
Posted by: Lucia | December 14, 2007 6:54 AM
You know, Google is now copying ideas from sites like eioba.com . But if you closly look at this site, you can find, that it could be hard to programm all this stuff (like Intelligent suggestions), even for Google.
Posted by: Damus | December 14, 2007 6:54 AM
I'm glad to see Google pushing this type of orginization. It will be great ot have an unbiased source on issues Wikipedia only pretends to define.
To everyone here who thinks Wikipedia is better: wake up people! I've been in far too many debates where the oppoition has cited Wikipedia itself. For all I know, they could have put their own reference INTO Wikipedia. In addition, you keep seeing these people who are "wikipedia experts" and "college professors" who end up being 30-somethings with criminal records. Wikipedia also has a behind-the-scenes ranking system where higher-ups are untouchable. (When I politely pointed out that one of these admins had authored and hosted fantasy child porn/beastiality erotica, that account got banned without warning.)
Wikipedia is just a bunch of blowhards patting eachother on the back for ripping off other sources and periodically providing a few (albeit usually biased) sources. It's a giant game of telephone paraphrasing a paraphrased misquotation. I'll be glad to see it implode.
Google, however, has only shown their dedication to user-friendliness without allowing their data to become corrupt. A Google-backed encyclopedia would be GREAT.
Posted by: Bing | December 14, 2007 7:19 AM
This reminds me a lot of Seth Godin's Squidoo, except that Google can actually drive a lot of traffic, and it's not just floundering around like Squidoo is. It certainly validates Seth's ideas though.. seems more similar to that than Mahalo, IMHO.
Posted by: Peter Cooper | December 14, 2007 9:13 AM
This looks more like a compliment to Wikipedia rather than a competitor. Reviewed articles on a variety of topics is an interesting idea and it is different from collaborative articles in substantial ways.
Posted by: Stephen | December 14, 2007 9:51 AM
...the comments are weak sauce so far today.
Anyone who's developed anything with Wikipedia knows they have an API. Google will just pull the friggin' Wikipedia entry for each Knowl page and link to it on Wikipedia. Or each Knowl page will show the top 10 results for a search of that Knowl title, and Wikipedia links will be in their usual place. Everyone gets to be happy because we have both models to closely linked, and it's all gravy train. Google isn't going to kill Wikipedia, they're going to try to feed off of it.
Classic Art of War guys.
Posted by: Apollo | December 14, 2007 9:59 AM
Competition is always good for industry. Even if Knols fails (which I don't think it will), it will make Wikipedia better in the process.
Posted by: Matt D | December 14, 2007 10:37 AM
This will be something interesting to keep any eye. I personally think competition may be good in this area. Wikipedia dominates the search results for so many areas that its getting a little out of hand.
Posted by: No Nonsense | December 14, 2007 12:54 PM
I see this as being almost identical to the Google scenario pictured in EPIC 2014. This is scary...and I'm going to stop using Google as much as possible.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_WqecXo1-Cc
Posted by: I'm Abandoning Google | December 14, 2007 2:31 PM
Only time will tell if Google Knol actually kills Wikipedia. One thing is for sure that , Google happens to be in the best position possible to do just that, HOW ? Over 50% of Wikipedia's traffic comes from Google. The citizen journalism is also a partial answer to generate right content. Google is also considering moving the blog search option to its front page, along with Web, Images, News etc.
Posted by: Scotty | December 15, 2007 9:37 PM
What happens to original research articles?
Posted by: match | December 16, 2007 3:48 AM
Increasingly I worry about Google's increasing momopolistic hold over a significant part of the world. But then I worried about IBM in an earlier time, so maybe there is hope.
Posted by: Silencio | December 17, 2007 11:41 AM