Internet Tycoon google is know for its different yet useful internet applications. Continuing the same track google has landed into the market of encyclopedia, where it plans to take market share of WiKi. The concept is known to be “KNOL” and the term is taken from the word knowledge. However, introducing this concept was totally different from the google’s past business tactics of “taking over” the famous websites, where in the list comes Youtube,feedburner etc etc. It was expected that google will certainly take over wikipedia too, but KNOL changed all the predictions.
KNOL, is not open for public as if now, but will be soon available. Only private invitations are been thrown inside the google or some major geeks. The working of knol is that a single author writes an article and this can be edited by other users, but with the permission of the original author. Multiple articles on the same topic will be allowed unlike WiKi, and the name of the author will be put on stake for its reputation.
You must be thinking that its a product by google, then how can google exclude its main source of earning i.e. google ads? Well you are quite right in this, google has also given an option to include ads or no, if chosen not to show any ads, then the article will appear without any advertisement, but if the author wants to show ads, then ofcourse the intelligent google’s script will generate ads related to the content of the page. In return, the author will share substantial amount of revenue from these ads payoff.
Now the main issue which i think will show up is the Search results. What priority will be given to the google’s KNOL in comparison to other results? Will Knol results appear separately just like google groups ? These strategies are still undisclosed. Though Google has promised not to edit the content written by the users, all the KNOL users are responsible for the content’s validation and liability.
End of the story, i see that launching KNOL just came from out of the blue, as there was news that google is under the process of acquiring About.com and the KNOL’s design was made for that only, but the author’s denied the google’s acquisition request when google planned to change their original design, which may effect their many articles. Google has always played the role of an unbiased search engine, but with KNOL the social and business ethics seem to be competing with each other, how would KNOL’s result be displayed over to google’s top 10 results, degrading WiKi and other encyclopedia ?
But whatever the critics, google will shove as a big whale in this encyclopedia area also. To all the google lovers, you have got a reason to get doped 😉
cheers !
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