Plans to go head to head with Wikipedia
The latest product to come from Google's labs is titled Knols and aims to go head to head with Wikipedia.
Knol stands for a unit of knowledge and via Google Knols, the company hopes to "encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it". Very similar to the service currently provided by free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
It has often come as a surprise to many that Google haven't yet dipped into the social network phenomenon, but has it already done so? With such a wide range of web based applications that interact with one another, Google has a social network all of its own. Though the task of catching Wikipedia's 2 million plus articles is a mammoth one to say the least, Google is arguably best placed to compete. If Google Knols does take off, how long will it be before we run a Google search to find the first results to be Google Knols, which then feature Google Ads? You get the idea.
Speaking on the official Google blog, VP of Engineering Udi Manber says:
"The web contains an enormous amount of information, and Google has helped to make that information more easily accessible by providing pretty good search facilities. But not everything is written nor is everything well organised to make it easily discoverable. There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it. We believe that many do not share that knowledge today simply because it is not easy enough to do that. The challenge posed to us by Larry, Sergey and Eric was to find a way to help people share their knowledge. This is our main goal."
The new project has already launched in beta form but is currently only available via invitation. We do however expect the beta to become more widely available in the near future.
A sample image of a Knol page is viewable by clicking here.
Useful links
Source: Google blog
