Comments on: Google’s Knol, a challenge to Wikipedia?

By: Song

Song — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 14:47:25 +0000

Jason adds, “The fact that the [Knol] article in the released screenshot was authored by a Stanford University academic is basically all you need to know about how Google views content on the web. It doesn’t count as knowledge until it’s given to you by an expert.”

By: VentureBeat » Roundup: Search Wikia to take on Google, Adready, Ideeli, EyeQ, more

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:48:59 +0000

[...] Wikia could go live by Christmas — Just as Google starts to experiment more with social search, the open-source search engine called Search Wikia, backed by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, could [...]

By: Knol to kill wikipedia | Startup Addict Musings

Knol to kill wikipedia | Startup Addict Musings — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 02:22:12 +0000

[...] by headline of their galactic domination. Google’s recent launch of “Knol”, a competitor to Wikipedia is making huge ripples in Google’s supposedly non-bias data indexing pond. As techcrunch [...]

By: Eric Eldon

Eric Eldon — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:28:14 +0000

Stephen, Google is in the content-hosting business now, not just the search engine business.

Consider: YouTube, Blogger, Pages, etc. Yes, these sites help Google make money through running Google ads.

Google is threatened by Wikipedia because Wikipedia one-ups content — such as blog posts on Blogger — within Google’s own search results.

That means people go to Wikipedia instead of sites that serve Google ads.

Google then loses money. Knol seems designed to counter that.

By: Jitendra

Jitendra — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 17:21:30 +0000

This is interesting…Organizing content around people is a really important idea. I think this is really different from Wikipedia in so much as this is people’s based vs Wikipedia is content based.

By: GOOG should trade as EVIL

GOOG should trade as EVIL — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:26:06 +0000

When will people cut through the noise and realize that Google has become as evil as Microsoft back in its heyday?

I look forward to the day when we will have an anti-trust trial looking into legitimacy of tying services to search engine to shut out competitors – just like Microsoft had with their desktop OS.

By: Stephen van Egmond

Stephen van Egmond — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 14:44:43 +0000

It’s still unclear how Wikipedia could be considered a “threat” to Google. What, because people *go there*? Because they don’t run ads? Ludicrous.

This is, at least, an interesting to the topic of expert authority, which Wikipedia has struggled with.

Lest anyone forget, Wikimedia Foundation’s annual budget is less than $5 million.

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 10:30:55 +0000

The PNG example (http://www.google.com/images/blogs/knol_lg.png) shows a CC-by-3.0 tag. As far as I’m concerned as a Wikipedian, that’s a BIG WIN for Wikipedia and what we do – making free content *normal and expected*. If they require contributions to be under a proper free content licence, then I’m a BIG FAN of this endeavour. I’ve already suggested on foundation-l that if Google commits to a proper free content licence for all Knol content, that WMF should publicly encourage the move.

Same reason Citizendium succeeding would be a big win for what we do – it’s not competition, it’s expanding the pool of unencumbered knowledge.