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COMMENTARY | Noah Brier

Knol

December 15, 2007 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 3 COMMENTS

Google's announcment of Knol, it's Wikipedia killer, sits right in-between a bunch of stuff I've been writing/thinking about lately. Clearly Google's motivation in this is the lost advertising dollars as Wikipedia searches show up near the top of many popular searches and the resulting pages display no Google ads. Or as Nick Carr put it, "I'm guessing that serving as the front door for a vast ad-less info-moshpit outfitted with open source search tools is not exactly the future that Google has in mind for itself. Enter Knol."

The question remains, is this really a need (after all it sounds a lot like some combination of Wikipedia/blogging) or is Google only spreading it's wings where the money is?

Tags: google, wikipedia

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COMMENTS

1Steven Kalifowitz

The NYTimes had a good quote from Danny Sullivan about Knol - "Google’s goal of making Knol pages easy to find on search engines could conflict with its need to remain unbiased." We shouldn't forget that while Google has a head-start on indexing the web, there's nothing to say that a better search engine couldn't come about & earn a substantial audience. YHOO, MSFT, IACI, among others are trying to do that today. And others will surely try.

Google has done a great job of maintaining a good / trustworthy name. If they screw that up by even "appearing" to favor their home-grown services over natural search results (read: competitors) - they'll end up in the same place MSFT was caught in with the EU, fighting over Windows Media Player being embedded in their OS.

December 15, 2007

2xheladin hoxha(POLIS UNIVERSITY OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN POLICIES-ALBANIA)

well done to google i love u and i think your new encicopedia called'KNOL'is going to kill wikipedia.congratulations.

December 17, 2007

3Benton

First off cheers Noah on listing in the top 10 for "Knol." Secondly Google has done this tight rope walk before blurring the line between making the public aware of a product and killing off another. In the long haul Google books is synonymous "spreading it's wings where the money is."

December 19, 2007