Google will soon be launching Knol – a knowledge archive similar to Wikipedia with the exception being t hat authors of content will be tracked more closely and ads will optionally be allowed to run on listings with authors getting a share of the profits.
It seems without a doubt that this will be a successful venture because authors will get paid to post content.
While it is logical for Google to have such a service it is obvious that as services like Wikipedia and others grow in size, they dominate search results. Already Wikipedia dominates top spots for so many search keywords… It is only a matter of time before the top six results on a page are from Knol, Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers.
While it is difficult to fault Google for wanting to get into the search repository business I find it tough to believe that such a service is needed. Wikipedia does a fine job as is.
But if people are incentivized to provide content it may make the results of Knol more accurate than Wikipedia. From this prospective, Knol could be beneficial to the greater internet community.
Still, this move just means it will be that much more difficult for smaller players to show up on search results. Keep in mind these companies will be forced to buy more and more Google ads as this happens. So for Google this is truly a win/win scenario.
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Hey Why Google doesn't take-over WIKIPedia itslef and trying to compete with them?
Google..U are now started evil things hummm :-(
April 2008, still waiting for anything but that blog posting on Knol that comes from Google itself.