Google has been very active in the Flu research community. Just a few weeks ago, the company also announced a partnership with the Public Library of Science, which now uses Google Knol to publish data and papers about influenza research.

Overall, we think this is a great project. Knol is a good, easy-to-use platform for these kinds of publications, and given that the articles are also archived on other servers, this project also doesn't rely on Google to keep Knol's servers running indefinitely.

PLoS, being a non-profit, is also the right organization to give this project a try. Commercial publishers are still wary of the Internet, and while the open access movement has been gathering some support over the last few years, a lot of research in most scientific fields will still be hidden behind paywalls for a long time.

All these experiments are mere rounding errors in Google's financial results. So why does it matter? Confidence matters to Google. More importantly, the fear of Google matters. It is important to them that every initiative has the early adopters jumping on board and declaring the space that Google has just entered to be "game over" for the existing players. Then VCs won't back anybody in that space.

This game worked for Microsoft for decades. But the market is bigger and savvier today and the Internet just looks too darned big for any single firm to dominate.

The Bigger Game - Creating More Content for Search

One explanation for Google's almost anarchic experimentation is that revenue from those products don't matter. They just want more "search fodder" to feed their cash cow. That makes sense. Zoho is committed to being ad free, as is Wikipedia. They have different reasons for being ad free, but that is not what matters.

If Google doesn't dominate web office, they will only be offering advertising on those who cannot afford to pay Zoho their really low price - which sounds like advertising to the sub, sub prime market. If Knol cannot get content up to Wikipedia standards, advertisers will have to associate with sub, sub prime content.

That does not look like the strategy of a winner.

What About Chrome?

Chrome showed Google's brand power in the market. A pretty geeky story (better performance and sandbox security for plug-ins) got tremendous traction in the media and prompted people who had never even made the jump from Explorer to Firefox to look at Chrome.

But it is very hard to see any strategic advantage for Google in splintering the browser market even further. Surely their interest lies in making sure Firefox gains against Explorer? Why not simply continue helping Mozilla?

This looks like an engineering project (yes, a very cool engineering project) that got out to market with a "oh, well, why not, seems a shame to throw it away" rationale.

Has Boredom Become an Issue Inside the Googleplex?

It is almost as if Google is bored. The cash just keeps rolling in. How do they exercise those amazing minds? This is not an uncommon problem. My first job was with a small publishing company in London that had one amazing cash cow and lots of "loss leaders". I naively asked one of the owners why he did this, why not just have the cash cow? He thought for a while and said "well, what would I do every day?"

YouTube, Now That's a Biggie, Right?

Well yes, it is the dominant online video sharing site. However as an advertising business YouTube still has big problems and may still be losing money. At Web 2.0 I asked many people "how would you monetize YouTube?" and a surprising number came up with the solution of getting people to pay to upload. It sounds plausible, small amounts from millions of uploads might add up. But that is totally contrary to Google's mantra of free content funded by advertising and it would allow a "free to upload" competitor to potentially disrupt the market.

Is The Sum Bigger Than the Parts?

Google looks increasingly like a giant private equity firm with lots of unrelated businesses betting on one making it big.

About one year ago, an internal document by Brad Garlinghouse, a Yahoo senior vice president, said that Yahoo was spreading its resources too thinly, like peanut butter on a slice of bread.

Is Google doing the same? Albeit with a cash cow that is massively better than Yahoo's?

What do you think? Is Google spreading itself too thin?

Cuil: Good, But Not Great

This week a new search engine called Cuil launched out of stealth-mode. As some had predicted, it seems Google's announcement about the size of its search index was a preemptive move to take some momentum away from one of Cuil's main features: the size of its index with 120 billion pages. As Cuil's team features quite a number of Google alumni, comparisons with Google's search are inevitable. In our tests, however, Cuil performed nowhere near as well as Google.

See also: Wow, How Did Cuil Get So Much Publicity on Day 1?! and Yahoo BOSS Should Capitalize On Cuil Damp Squib Launch

Why British Telecom Bought Ribbit, The Web Telephony Platform

Communications company British Telecom (BT) has acquired innovative web telephony platform Ribbit for a reported $105 million. BT has been sniffing around the Bay Area for startups to acquire for some time and this one is a great fit. Not just because both companies are in the voice market but because as a means of folding click-to-call functionality into any web application - Ribbit is fascinating. BT was supposed to be a big mover and shaker in the communications industry of the future, but it hasn't worked out that way so far. Can Ribbit move the needle for BT? We think it could in a big way.

Google Acquires Omnisio

Maybe to counter some of the bad news around YouTube this week, Google just announced the acquisition of the Y Combinator funded video annotation and mashup company Omnisio. According to Google, the acquisition of Omnisio will allow them to keep pushing the envelope of what is possible with online video. Neither Google nor Omnisio have commented on the price of the acquisition, but it is clear that the Omnisio team is going to join YouTube.

Yahoo Music Does The Right Thing: Issues Refunds to Customers

Last Thursday, we reported that Yahoo Music was going to shut down its store and DRM licensing servers on September 30, which was basically going to leave anybody who ever bought music from the Yahoo Music Store without a license to play their music. Now, however, Yahoo has announced that it will issue a refund to its customers for the full value of their purchases. Yahoo is also looking at making copies of the music its customers bought available to them as MP3s without any DRM.

The Bigger Questions Behind The Scrabulous Shutdown

As of this week, Scrabulous, the wildly popular Facebook Scrabble game, is no more. If you try to login to the app now you'll get the message "Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice." You have the option of entering your email address to receive further information about developments in the matter. While Scrabulous fans are certainly angered over the app's shutdown, the unanswered question still looms: did Hasbro have to do this?

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

Web Trends

Some Web Apps Work Better Together

How many new websites can you fit in a Volkswagen Beetle? Sometimes it feels like that's what we're trying to do these days - but all these new applications and services don't have to be crammed into our heads and lives as separate things to try out and remember. Many new technologies work best in concert; the functionality of one application can be vastly improved by using it together with another one. Here are some of our favorite examples of apps that work best together, followed by some favorite workflows from friends of ReadWriteWeb. We hope you'll share your favorite combos in comments, too, so we can all learn some new things.

Peering Into Microsoft's Cloud

On July 24th, Microsoft held their annual Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM), an event where many of Microsoft's top executives come together to talk about the company's progress and achievements. At this year's meeting, Microsoft Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie hinted at Microsoft's cloud initiatives, a part of their Software + Services (S+S) strategy. While Ozzie did not reveal either codenames or ship dates during his speech, there is still some information we can piece together to help determine what Microsoft's cloud will look like.

Brandstreaming: What Is It & Who's Doing It?

If there's a hot new social media trend happening, you can bet that companies are trying to find a way to use it too. It happened of course with blogging, it happened with Twitter, and it is now happening with FriendFeed and other lifestreaming apps. Indeed RSS vendor Pheedo has coined a neat term for this: brandstreaming. It defines a brandstream as "a consistent flow of content created by a brand". According to a recent report, 53% of online users are consuming content outside of a publisher's site - through the use of widgets, RSS readers, social networks and mobile devices.

What Startups Can Learn From Haruki Murakami

Alex Iskold is a big fan of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. The genius of Murakami is in his discipline, focus and determination. He seems him as a virtual Zen master - an embodiment of wisdom, passion, skills and exceptional will. The elements of his work and life story are inspirational and (here's where ReadWriteWeb comes in) particularly applicable when you're running a startup. Therefore in this post, we take a look at what modern technology startups can learn from this Japanese literary master.

The Google Knol Threat to Content Businesses - a Wiki Plug-in Might Level The Playing Field

Does Knol (our review) make Google into a “content company”? Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis made a compelling case this week. You can say he is conflicted, because his Mahalo venture has a lot to lose if Knol succeeds. Or you can say that he knows of what he speaks, because he is in the eye of the storm. Jason’s view that Google is the closest we have to an operating system for the web makes sense. His comparison to how Microsoft, an earlier generation operating system vendor, invaded the application market that had belonged to their partners, rings true. This is what dominant tech companies have always done.

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Antitrust is a lumbering beast and ineffective in fast moving technology markets. Historically, by the time it lumbers into action, the cycle is starting to move against the incumbent anyway. That happened with both IBM and Microsoft.

I have already written about the danger of a Google monoculture; and was flamed by people who thought I was being alarmist. Slowly-boiled frogs seldom get alarmed until it is too late. The launch of Knol has turned up the heat enough to alarm some more people.

Specifically, the issue with Knol is: how much Google tunes their search algorithm to favor Knol content vs alternative content on the same subject? This is where Google could be crossing the line. This is not so far from Microsoft bundling Explorer in order to beat Netscape.

Mahalo and Squidoo - Roadkill?

The companies that are most at threat are those like Mahalo and Squidoo, i.e. semi-automated aggregation plays. These appealed to VCs because they are more scalable than pure-play content. This market appeals to Google for the same reason. Mahalo, Squidoo and others are in the way and the steamroller is coming. They had better be really agile to get out of the way. They look like roadkill to me.

Google may make more money for individual content creators than they can make from Mahalo, Squidoo or alternatives. So Google will get the popular vote and that may be enough to forestall antitrust action.

However, even individual content creators may want to think twice. With Google providing both the content platform and the revenue, it feels a little bit like a medieval landowner who can change the rules on the peasants when it appeals to them. Of course Google would never be so evil as to exercise their “droit du seigneur“, but why put them in a position where they might be tempted?

The Google Threat to Content Creators

Anybody who employs content creators is certainly sensible to wonder when Google will re-define content in such a way that their business is threatened.

Content creators - whether the individuals or their employers - increasingly rely on either WordPress or MT. Google’s Blogger is a distant third. Both have powerful plugin architectures. There is good open source Wiki code out there. What does it take to create a Knol-like “persistent community content” plugin for WordPress and MT? That looks pretty simple technically. Maybe its already out there, riding below the hype radar. It would fit the author-moderated model of a blogger or Blog network. It adds persistent content (read “more page views”). It gets away from reliance on feeding the reverse chronological mill.

Then use OpenX rather than Google Ad Manager. And Piwik rather than Google Analytics. Bingo, it’s declaration of independence for content creators and their employers.

Now that Knol is public, it makes us wonder who you would rather party with: Knol experts, Squidoo lensmasters or Wikipedia editors?

Authorship/Identity

Knol puts a lot of emphasis on authorship and, somewhat akin to Amazon's "Real Name" scheme, authors can validate their identity on Knol through either a credit card or phone number.

The default setting for every Knol is "moderated collaboration." In this mode, anybody with a Google account can suggest changes to an knol, but the author has to accept these changes before they go live.

Authors can also invite others to contribute to their articles and given them the same rights as the original author.

There is also an option for authors to write a short bio of themselves in Knol. While this is interesting here, it will be even more interesting to see if Google might start sharing these Knol identities (and maybe even the users' reputation) among more of its properties.

Usage

Setting up a Knol is as easy as clicking the "Write a Knol" button. The text editor, too, is pretty straightforward, especially in the face of the often cryptic mark-up language most wikis use.

Knol uses a rich text editor, which presents users with all the typical editing functions, including basic formatting options, links (all set to 'nonfollow'), and the ability to add references.

As of now, you can not embed any videos or other content, except for the New Yorker Cartoons that Google incensed for this project for reasons only Google knows.

Users who don't want to write their own articles can review and rate knols. There is also an option to leave comments on every knol.

Creative Commons

Users can choose between three licenses for their articles, the Creative Commons Attribution License, the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License, and an "All Rights Reserved" license. The Attribution license is the default setting. Users can chose a different license for every knol.

Advertising

Authors on Knol can enter their AdSense data into Knol. Besides the cut Google already takes from the advertising through AdSense anyway, authors will get the regular AdSense payout for every click on an ad. This seems like a smart way to reward users who write the best (or most popular) content, while still making money for Google.

In the competition with Wikipedia, this might mean that some authors could divert their attention from editing Wikipedia articles to Knol. However, the question will also be if spammers can find a way of abusing this.

New Yorker Cartoons?

While there is no option to embed any videos or other content into the site, authors can embed cartoons from the New Yorker. This is done through a rather cumbersome process where users have to first search for a cartoon in the New Yorker store and then enter the ID number of the cartoon into Knol. Why Google chose the New Yorker's cartoon archive for this is anybody's guess, but chances are that Google will announce more content partnerships in the near future.

Is Google Going After Wikipedia?

Given how often Wikipedia results appear as Google's top results, it would make sense for Google to look at this and decide to start its own competitor. By incentivizing authors through AdSense and by giving its users simple, but powerful tools to start their articles, Google might just be on the right track. While Google keeps reiterating that Knol is not meant to compete with Wikipedia, it's hard to see how that wouldn't be the case.

Knol, of course, has far fewer articles now than Wikipedia, but as it grows, it will be interesting to watch if Google is going to give preference to its own pages over the Wikipedia results. After all, Knol carries Google advertising and Wikipedia doesn't, so Google would clearly have an incentive in doing so, though the potential public outcry if Google would try to do this might prevent them from even attempting it.

Modern knowledge management is all about herding cats. Ever tried telling a cat what to do? Even “kitty, kitty, kitty” calls are pretty ineffective. A bowl of milk is better. Google’s recently released Knol service shows that they understand this.

1. Money.
2. Attention (which may lead to more money or just goodwill).
3. Feel good about your contribution to the world’s knowledge.

It may seem a tad mercenary to put them in that order, but that simply reflects Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Look at how the existing alternatives to Knol score on these three criteria:

• Wikipedia. Useless on 1 and 2, great on 3. Wikipedia has been a phenomenal success story and most commentators put Knols as a Wikipedia competitor. I appreciate the irony of using Wikipedia for almost all the background links for this post, including the one on Knol; that was not deliberate, they were just the best sources that appeared from a Google search. Wikipedia will continue to thrive in genuine long tail stuff, where there really is not any economic value but just the passion of a few people to set the record straight.
• Wikia. This is on much more dangerous ground. Contributing your time to Wikipedia for the good of the world is OK as nobody is raking in the $$$ from your efforts. The idea of seeing the Wikia founders and VCs on front cover of Fortune all based on your efforts…. My prediction is that Wikia will be absorbed into Amazon; they are already investors and have the most to lose from a Google monoculture.
• Mahalo. They claim to have enough capital to last over 4 years without making a profit, so it will be a long time before we see how effective this is. They do pay contributors (either salary or per contribution) so they score OK on 1 and 3. They show who created the content and who contributed; but this is bottom of the page and not prominent. The attention branding is for Mahalo and not for the author. I am a skeptic on Mahalo. They are going for the fat part of the tail. That is the province of specialist publishers (who can figure out how to get some user generated content).

These different attempts all matter, because they are one of the best routes to the more structured Web that is sometimes labeled Web 3.0 or Semantic Web.

Just for fun, here is my definition of Web 3.0:

“The combination of Web 2.0 mass collaboration with structured databases”.

Or as Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Ventures calls it, “meaning = data + structure“.

That is simple to say - and incredibly hard to pull off technically. There are two things that are relatively easy:

1. Getting lots of people to contribute unstructured information for free - comments, forums, blogs, etc.

2. Getting lots of people to input data into forms where the structure is already defined in a relational database.

Two things are incredibly hard:

1. Getting computers to understand semantics/structure in unstructured text. This has been the aim of natural language search for a very long time. Lots of very smart firms such as Hakia and Powerset are investing a lot of money to get there, but on the evolutionary scale they look like the earliest life forms in the primordial soup compared to humans.

2. Getting a lot of humans without any technical training in SQL or data modelling to create structure “on the fly”, to let structure “emerge” from lots of input through some form of “collaborative data modelling”. It looks like Freebase is attempting something along these lines, although since their March announcement it has been very quiet so that is hard to say. Freebase looks like a really long play, potentially huge and game changing but not any time soon. Because this stuff is hard.

Google Knol looks like an intelligent way to motivate lots of people to add the structure that is needed.

Knol functionality is not hard to replicate. The barrier to entry for a competitor is low. The big question is whether Google will tweak their search algorithms to favor a Knol entry over any other content. I don’t believe they will do this. Firstly because they are riding high and don’t need to resort to such grubby tactics and secondly because that would trigger some serious Anti-Trust action.

The most likely source of a Knol competitor, IMHO, would be a plug-in for Wordpress MU. But that, as the saying goes, is another story.

Cat image: phantom kitty