Google Takes a Crack at Wikipedia with Knol

Google is gunning for Wikipedia with a new service called Knol that aims to capitalize on the growing popularity of social encyclopedias. The Google Knol (defined as a "unit of knowledge") project is in closed trials right now with no word on when it will be open to the public to try.

(Click this image for a look at what a Google Knol entry looks like.)

According to a recent blog posting about the Knol project by Google we know a bit about what to expect. From what I can tell Knol shares a lot of the same traits as the pre-existing types of social reference pages such as Wikipedia, Squidoo, and Mahalo. As with these other services Knol users have the ability to create a page on any topic with information, pictures, links and more. It's in the details where Google is looking to one-up the competition and justify its existence.

What Makes Knol Unique

Google's primary focus on Knol will be with the authorship of each page. The original creator of each page will have a miniature profile on the page and will be given a wide variety of options to control the page.

One significant difference between Knol and competing services is that authors will be given the option to place Google ads on the pages they manage and receive revenue from those ads.

The author of a page can also limit what other users can and can't modify on their page. A comments section will always exist, allowing users to weigh in on the page, but actual modification of the bulk of the content can be completely restricted by the author and owner of the page. Will this create wars between experts of similar topics? I wouldn't bet against it.

One of the major problems with Wikipedia is the credibility. Because Wikipedia pages can be edited by anyone credibility issues crop up a lot. With Knol, author profiles are directly placed on the page giving browsers a sense of who is behind the information. Authors also have the ability to disallow other users from modifying the entries.

Another layer of checks and balances are offered as Knol integrates five-star rating system used for each individual page.

Some other concerns that Google has already addressed is the ownership of the content, which will be entirely owned by the authors, therefore allowing for reprinting, reuse and more by the author. Google has also addressed the search engine optimization and how the Knol pages will not be given any preference on Google's search engine and each page, like all Web pages, will be crawled, ranked and placed by search engine spiders.

It's obvious that Wikipedia has a lot of flaws, and while Google is taking the right approach to attempt to address these flaws in Knol, it's tough to tackle these social knowledge aggregators in a way which will make everyone happy.

Google, Wikipedia, and others should be given a little slack, though, it's hard to design a system that makes billions upon billions self-proclaimed experts happy.

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