Friday, December 14th 2007

Google Developing Wikipedia Competitor

Google has decided to continue its bid for world domination by introducing Google Knol, where the company will "encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it" - sound familiar? The name Knol stands for a unit of knowledge, and Google's service differs from Wikipedia in that users will not edit each other's articles, instead they will write individual knols which compete against others written about the same subject. Another major difference between Knol and Wikipedia is that if the author chooses to let Google include ads with their knol, they will receive a "substantial revenue share" of the money that Google makes from the ads. So basically, Google is trying to encourage users to write encyclopedia entries about a subject by offering them a financial reward in return. At present the tool is still in the first phase of testing, and you only join by invitation, but Google eventually plans to let everyone use Knol for free.
Source: Official Google Blog
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3 Comments on Google Developing Wikipedia Competitor

#1
surfsk8snow.jah
Whoa. When i first saw the topic thread, I thought, "Get real google. In your dreams, wikipedia is a phenomenon."
However, with that "financial reward in there" you might find me writing a couple Structural Engineering articles...
Posted on Reply
#2
panchoman
Sold my stars!
wikipedia is widely criticized and unaccepted for factual errors and what not, i wonder if the same thing will happen with google, the rep now is good, hopefully wikigoogle won't fuck up googles rep
Posted on Reply
#3
Shizelbs
So long as there is no governing review board to approve publication, these online encyclopedia databases will never be fully credible.

Sounds like fun though. Sign me up.
Posted on Reply
Dec 20th, 2024 23:48 EST change timezone

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