Upcoming Google vs Wikipedia: enter the Knol, a paid equivalent
Announced back in December 2007, Google’s paid Wikipedia rival known as Knol has recently gone live for public beta testing. A Knol is a ‘unit of knowledge’, and in Google’s new project, each unit of knowledge will be authored by a person or group of persons. Authors may have their full name or even picture associated with the content they author. The authors are meant to be experts in their field, and can chose to have ads present on their knowledge page to generate money for their pockets.
Editing will take place via user suggestion, but will only become apparent if the Knol owner likes the change. Obviously, then, it makes sense to get in early and ‘own’ a topic, since many non-medical topics are yet to be covered. This is very different to Wikipedia, and I would imagine that it is meant to be. Wiki have that market sown up nice and tight, but this new business model from Google may be different enough to warrant some healthy interest. For example, this style of site will undoubtedly decrease the amount of rubbish entered onto the website, but with no democratic agreement about content, the ‘Knol’ owner is all-powerful. Controversial topics such as euthanasia, abortion, and err.. the iPhone, are likely to draw a lot of criticism regardless of their content.
Ironically, Wikipedia already has all of this information, and this is why it may always have the upper hand. Updated at lightening fast speed, Wikipedia is the ultimate dispenser of knowledge today, but with a proportion of it questionable (at best), is any knowledge wanted, or only good knowledge? Competition is encouraged, so we will wait and see how this develops.
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