So Google just launched a beta of Knol (http://knol.google.com/), their site to compete with Wikipedia.
I had a look at it, and it just looks like most of the higher-end article sites.
I personally don't think it looks like it will be able to compete with Wikipedia, but I think we can say goodbye to the humble article site.
What do you think?
It's very interesting, to be honest, I wasn't expecting Google to do something like this.
There is also the question of whether they will have higher then normal page ranks on Google...
I've been reading some articles that are questioning that. Google says they won't rank it higher, but you never know, some results, while not within the top ten or twenty, are still high for something so new.
Though right now from all the blog activity, Knol is probably quite highly ranked.
We'll have to wait and see what happens with Knol, whether it has the power to stand up to Wikipedia, or if it's just a side project that won't go anywhere at all.
Interesting...
But they still have to go a long way until they have most of the "important" stuff written, I search "belgium" and it didn't come up with anything 
So they still have a pretty long way to go until we can say that they are competing with wikipedia.
Greetz
Adri I like Google's knol. They don't have a lot of articles yet (700, or something like that?), but the articles I have looked at seem to be well-written. If the quality stays this way, and there will be a steady flow of new articles, I think this has great potential.
What I don't understand, is why people (including google themselves) see this as a competitor to wikipedia. It's not at all wiki-like. You can't edit each others articles, only post comments to them. It looks more like a 'blog for grown ups'-type of thing to me.
But again, I like it: nice, simple layout. No multiple pages. And some experts are 'verified' by Google, which means (I assume) I can trust them to be who they claim to be and to have the expertise they claim to have.
By the way, if you go to http://knol.google.com/k/knol/directory-000#, the first article ("Tooth Pain") is gone. Two days ago it was still available (an interesting, professional article), but someone posted a comment suggesting the text was copy-pasted from another site. Now the article is taken offline, but it's still in the index.. 
| MrBlueSky wrote: |
| What I don't understand, is why people (including google themselves) see this as a competitor to wikipedia. It's not at all wiki-like. You can't edit each others articles, only post comments to them. It looks more like a 'blog for grown ups'-type of thing to me. |
Google doesn't see themselves as competitor, and while it's true that they aren't the same, they are very similar.
| Quote: |
| Google is dismissing the notion that Knol is its Wikipedia killer, but both operate under the premise that Web users can collectively create a knowledge base that can be searchable and vast. |
And by the way, while users can't directly edit other peoples articles, they can submit edits, and there was even a case where a user posted a comment saying that a certain article was copied from another site, and the article was removed a little bit later.Thanks for posting this info about Google's Knol project. They are clearly in the early stages, and will not be competitive with large existing projects for quite some time. Authors are complaining of inability to use the knol search function. How ironic for a company like Google! Nevertheless, I think we need to be patient for a few months and see if their content settles into something useful and they provide better access to it as it does.
It appears that they have indeed trumped most article sites already, as far as a potential author is concerned. Google allows the author to retain full control of their content, including deleting or modifying it any time they choose. Google allows use of adsense, so they should often beat most article sites for monetary return.
Knol cannot compete with Wikipedia at present, because there are no set editorial restrictions that lead to the consistency of an encyclopedia. If highly successful, Knol could eventually provide effective peer review and authors could turn selected articles into encyclopedia articles, probably with a rating system that would define several quality measures. Authors would probably have to allow collaboration and accept most reasonable updates in order to keep the article well-rated.
Does anyone know how long Knol has existed? It seems pretty new, but may have been in development but not publicized for a while.
As far as I know, Knol has existed for less than a week.
Why does Google need to compete with Wikipedia?
wikipedia will never die and is always gonna be better than knol 
I agree. I don't think Knol and Wikipedia are really any comparison.. To me they provide two vastly different products. But the media are touting Knol as google's answer to Wikipedia.
