Knol – A Unit of Nothing
Did you guys know about Knol, a Google-operated Wikipedia? Yeah. Neither did I. That’s probably because it’s no where near Wikipedia in regards to coverage, accuracy, etc etc etc.
Great article here about it… the man speaks truth. Chuck Knol.
boooo googles attempts at knock offs. booo knol. boooo google phone.
I have known about this one for some time, been following it’s development from private beta. It is google’s attempt to get one more item in the search results so they can display ads.
Search results on google are moving further down the page after their own properties. Google news, youtube, paid ads then everything else. For most major searches Wikipedia has top results so they thought they could jump on that and then optimize their results to show Knol in it.
I am somewhat disturbed by Google’s apparent drive to become the Microsoft or IBM of the 21st Century. Sure they give away (access to) loads of stuff like scripts, maps and what not but it’s all based on them so, that means that a lot of sites out THERE rely on Google stuff to operate. They have their tentacles into almost everything and it just worries me is all, I mean it feels like sometimes they OWN the internet one way or another.
At some point I think all the services they offer will be infested with ads and this thing about photographing every street from the infamous Google Car (saw one in Sheffield the other day) just gives me the “privacy shivers” man
Hey ho, I am glad that knol is not working out so well simply because I don’t want ANY company to have a monopoly on t’internet.
Pax
@Christopher
Definitely agree with you on that. Google’s ad values are bucket low.