Archive notice: This article was originally published on December 14, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Google is planning a rival project to the popular online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. As Udi Manber, Vice President of Engineering at Google, announced on the official Google Blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com, the search-engine giant is currently developing a platform called “knol”, which is intended to serve for the dissemination of knowledge and as a source of information on the Internet. In future, experts will have the opportunity – similarly to Wikipedia – to write articles on certain terms and keywords and – unlike Wikipedia – also to put their own names under them. Google wants to strengthen the position of the individual authors, and changes by other users will only be made possible if the author agrees to them beforehand.
“According to our announcement, this is initially a project for the USA. We cannot currently name a period for the launch date”, Google spokesman Kay Oberbeck says in response to an enquiry from the pressetext.de news service. “knol” is currently being tested by a selected group of users and remains in the development phase. The new offering is to contain a number of community applications in future. According to Manber, there will be comment functions, the possibility to ask questions and to post additional content. The name “knol” is derived from the English “knowledge”.
The core idea of the project is to place the authors more at the centre. “Books bear the author’s name on their covers, newspaper articles are marked by name and scientific contributions also name their authors – the web has so far developed without a strong connection to identifying authors”, Manber writes. Google is, however, of the opinion that knowledge about the originator could help users make better use of online content.
The authors are also to be given the opportunity to place advertising on their contribution pages and consequently share in the revenue. However, no details have yet been given. Google also points out that all responsibility for the content will lie with the authors and that the company will not perform any editing of it. After completion of the test phase, “knol” is to be completely unrestricted and open to every Internet user, which is why Manber is already pointing out that not every contribution will be of the highest quality.
