By Tom Espiner, 17 December 2007 08:12
NEWS
Search and advertising giant Google is developing a user-generated online encyclopaedia that could rival Wikipedia.
Google has named the scheme the "knol project" - a knol being a "unit of knowledge" - according to a blog post by Google engineering vice president Udi Manber. The company aims to tie strong identities to contributing authors and those seeking to edit knols.
Photos: The best of Google Sky
Travel the galaxy without leaving your work stationÂ… click here for the best pics from Google Sky
Manber wrote "Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions."
Google will host and provide tools to produce and edit knol web pages but will not edit or advocate any of the content. However, entries Google judges to be of higher quality will be given a higher page ranking in Google search.
Entries will be rated by the community and will be able to be reviewed after the unspecified testing period. The project is currently in beta and has been sent to a small group of testers. Once the knol tool goes live, contributors will be able to monetise their pages by including Google ads.
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. Christopher Hubbard
Why are Google attempting to fix something that isn't broken? They are in danger of following Microsoft's trend of losing innovative edge and jumping on passing bandwagons with more capital than their originators.
Making open-source competitors to proprietary products is one thing, but what is the logic of starting a new encyclopaedia from scratch when the "public" stand to gain more by Google investing their tools and knowledge in the established Wikipedia.
2. Haydn Rees
It should be an interesting clash of paradigms.
On one hand, the grass-roots level, not for profit, distributed, open-source, mass participation, viral, cultural emblematic incumbent, ("Shopping online for deals on some writable media, I edit wikipedia" White and Nerdy; W. A. Yankovick), vs a corporate with limitless cash.
Interesting to see the contest this way round for a change.
3. anonymous
Chris, you obviously missed the last sentance which contained the words 'Google Ads'...
Wikipedia doesn't have these...