Google's Wikipedia clone Knol launches.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/knol-is-open-to-everyone.html

by ptm • 18 years ago

62 57 18 years ago

googleblog.blogspot.com

brandonkm• 18 years ago

This looks like something really great. I think that a "google wikipedia clone" can only benefit the web, by offering innovative features to the "web encyclopedia" space. This is something distinctly different and I like it. From the short time i've spent on the site it looks like this could be pretty big.

Kaizyn2• 18 years ago

You're joking right? Basically, they're going to populate their encyclopedia by pillaging the information out of wikipedia. Search engines should not be competing with content providers.

crocus• 18 years ago

How can it be pillaging when the whole point of Wikipedia is that the information in it is free for everyone else to use?

dominik• 18 years ago

Curious the front page has "Who needs a search engine? Ctrl+F" on the right hand side above the listing of Knols...

unalone7• 18 years ago

I saw that as a typical example of Google humor. But from the way the site's laid out it also looks like they're trying to make Knol a standalone thing. They don't want people looking at this page and thinking Google.

zain• 18 years ago

If that was the case, they would probably get a dedicated domain for it instead of using knol.google.com.

lux• 18 years ago

Still, what I'd like most from an open encyclopedia project is a simple, stable API. There are external projects bringing this to Wikipedia, but Google (API frontrunners that they sometimes are) don't have this at all. Hope they add it soon.

bscofield• 18 years ago

Not really sure why people keep calling this a Wikipedia clone - seems much closer to Squidoo than to Wikipedia, to me. Granted, that's a debate that's already been had and done (back in December, if I recall correctly).

* disclaimer: I have worked with Squidoo in the past, and still have a couple of lenses there. I'm not taking a position on which is better - just pointing out a better comparison.

danhak• 18 years ago

Don't know about Squidoo, but based on my brief look at Knol it seems very distinct from Wikipedia for a single reason: individual authors credited along with name, photo and profile link.

I think this flies in the face of many things that made Wikipedia a success.

Not to mention my first instinct was to visit knol.com, the website of a Dutch company who manufactures something resembling a crippled R2D2 using a walker.

I vote against this project as a serious rival for Wikipedia but only time will tell.

unalone7• 18 years ago

Squidoo and Knol seems to have the same idea behind it. Knol has the advantage of looking very nice in the process, and - of course - being sponsored by Google. Seth Godin is bright, but Squidoo is not fun to use and not fun to look at. Knol has an edge there.

The fact that Google didn't buy Knol.com is sort of odd, agreed.

I don't think this can compete against Wikipedia. It can, however, serve as a supplement - it doesn't have the disadvantage of tyrannical, half-crazed admins. That makes it much freer than Wikipedia, in a sense, and that'll give it an advantage in quantity, if not quality.

breck• 18 years ago

I bet those crippled R2D2's start flying off the shelf. (I also went to knol.com first). Could they become the next utube.com?

ars2• 18 years ago

It's the 'pedia part that's like wikipedia. Not the wiki part. They want to make an online encyclopedia.

I hope it succeeds, wikipedia is so full of wrong, but verifiable, information that it's hard to use it. (ColdFusion, UFO's, and the Singularity, are wonderful examples of wrong, but verifiable.)

bigbang2• 18 years ago

One of the reasons I love wikipedia is that its neutral and no ads. Google Im sure will have plans to stick in some adsense and share revenue with the author. Why should I contribute to an article bcos of which the original author might get paid.

Even if there willbe no ads , with the author's profile there, any contribution I may make doesnt feel like, Im part of it. I love all contibutors being annonymous in wikipedia

I vote this me-too project down.

wmf5• 18 years ago

Obviously Knol is structured to reward/encourage authors, not contributors. Hopefully the result will be not a Wikipedia-killer but something with a different flavor.

bigbang2• 18 years ago

Wont it be more like a blog then? Except ofcourse worrying about how to get traffic

admoin• 18 years ago

What is to stop people from ripping articles from wikipedia and posting them en masse to earn adsense revenue?

wmf5• 18 years ago

Why would anyone visit such pages? Much will depend on how Google Search treats Knol pages.

anewaccountname• 18 years ago

Is the GFDL compatible with the Knol license?

zitterbewegung• 18 years ago

Knol doesn't distinctly look like a google page. It seems like they are trying a new layout and design.

unalone7• 18 years ago

Does anybody else think the design looks a bit two-faced?

Serious-looking, authoritative text - and a round, cartoony button asking you to help out.

EDIT: Also, the site can't seem to decide whether it wants to be single-spaced or double-spaced. And it's not certain of what fonts it wants to use, either.

plusbryan2• 18 years ago

Word. I'm getting sick of Google's lack of design sense. Either stick with the spartan, or hire some good designers. I'm sure that horrendous 'write something' button was the result of an A-B test, but the knol logo is an embarrassment.

unalone7• 18 years ago

Yeah. That's the problem I have with Google. They have functionality that's second-to-none, but they have no taste for visuals. I'm debating moving entirely over to MobileMe for email, for instance, forsaking lack of tabs for the sake of not hating my screen when Gmail's showing. (I also find it funny that Google-leaving founders have the same taste: FriendFeed's visual update is one of the few updates that was noticeably a step backwards.)

And for the love of God, you're right. That is embarrassing logo if I ever saw one. Writing the message out in plaintext, the logo itself, and the miniature scaling... I was hoping Knol could actually look BETTER than Wikipedia, and this is not looking good.

brianlash2• 18 years ago

I think the problem lies in the fact that Knol exists squarely between "engineering design" (re: Gmail, Wikipedia) and pro design.

Both extremes work over the long-term, but the murky middle makes no sense. It's a half-attempt and the site looks worse for it.

jrockway• 18 years ago

From the article:

We are happy to announce an agreement with the New Yorker magazine which allows any author to add one cartoon per knol from the New Yorker's extensive cartoon repository. Cartoons are an effective (and fun) way to make your point, even on the most serious topics.

Is today April 1? Does adding a pseudo-intellectual New Yorker cartoon to every page really make the information seem more useful to people?

wmf5• 18 years ago

Maybe Wikipedia can compete by giving you a free Tufte quote with every edit.

Tichy4• 18 years ago

I missed the cartoons bit. Where can I access the cartoons collection of the New Yorker magazine?

I am totally just going ratings whore on those knols. If a nice cartoons makes users rate my knols higher, that's fine by me - whatever. It is simply a game Google forces me to play to increase the search rank of my web sites.

alex_c2• 18 years ago

It is simply a game Google forces me to play to increase the search rank of my web sites.

Can you expand on that?

Tichy4• 18 years ago

Great, another Google service I am forced to use to increase the search rank of my web site :-(

Edit: done entering a knol about "Mondkalender" (moon calendars). I really have mixed feelings about this... What would people's incentive be to write on knol rather than on their own blog? Presumably Knol articles will be rated higher, so Google's power forces people to use Knol (certainly no SEO will skip knolling). On the other hand with the rating and personal credibility effect, it could yield some interesting results.

SwellJoe2• 18 years ago

Looks like an About.com clone, to me. There's no "wiki" involved here...the point of a wiki is "anyone can edit it", not what data the wiki happens to contain. WikiPedia is first, and foremost, a wiki. (Secondly, it's a culture. The data it contains only comes in a distant third, I think.)

ken• 18 years ago

It's surprisingly frustrating to see "more that 25 million" in an online encyclopedia and not be able to fix the typo.

nickb3• 18 years ago

It looks like a Squidoo clone to me, more than an About.com or Wikipedia clone.

rapind• 18 years ago

Agreed. Squidoo clone.

iamdave• 18 years ago

I didn't see the word wiki anywhere in that article.

SwellJoe2• 18 years ago

I didn't see the word wiki anywhere in that article.

I was referring to the title of the submission, which called Knol a "Wikipedia clone". I merely pointed out that Knol is nothing like Wikipedia.

gojomo• 18 years ago

The articles, even those by MDs, read like the sort of padded, plodding writing-for-hire crap used to manipulate Google's rankings.

Google should be fighting "MFA" (Made-For-Adsense) content, not joining the party.

radley• 18 years ago

Knol? Knoll?

Will there be any confusion with Knoll, the 80 year-old internationally recognized and respected design institution?

plusbryan2• 18 years ago

In other news, knol.com seems awfully slow today.

plaggypig• 18 years ago

There are many things about this project that don't make any sense, as others have commented; it is not a wiki, does not compete with Wikipedia, seems to stand alone from other Google products in terms of design and yet they still haven't changed the name even after the owner of knol.com refused to sell.

One of the things that I like about Wikipedia is that I can just hand craft a /wiki/Title URL - Knol's URLs are obfuscated behind strange ID's and author's names. Do they not consider these things?

On a similar topic, I'll never understand why they decided to shelve Google Answers - there could have been a great synergy between that community and a wiki.

Knol will fail simply because it does not beat Wikipedia in any respect.

Was this born from a 20% side project by any chance? I can imagine some executive sitting behind his desk thinking "we need to buy wikipedia, but we can't.. so anyway, this knol thing looks close enough.. let's promote it to production".

teamonkey• 18 years ago

They have a plan. :)

I posted this when they launched Lively:

> in this view it also makes sense for them to take over Wikipedia and Flickr

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=244629

Now they've got their own product that fills the Wikipedia gap and is also more suited to their purposes.

agotterer• 18 years ago

What stops people from gaming this by creating automated posts to make money on adsense?

fharper1961• 18 years ago

The big difference I see is that you can have several competing knols on the same or overlapping subjects.

Big consequences - you don't need to spend a lot of time and effort enforcing NPOV through consensus - people can express their own POV

ashish1• 18 years ago

Yet another attempt by Google!!! Knol.... hmmmm... Maybe Google should try acquiring wikipedia instead.. ;) !!!

Google's Wikipedia clone Knol launches.

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