Yup it’s official, Google is going to take over the world. With a plethora of applications, services and rumours (the latest being the Sprint takeover!), Google has come quite way. Wikipedia introduces them as an ‘American public corporation, specializing in Internet search and online advertising.’ And we all know that the Sun revolves around the Earth! Let me put it this way where do your clicks mostly point you to? Wikipedia, Google, orkut? (Okay leave out the last one.) To put things in perspective Wikipedia received close to a couple of hundred millions visits in the last month where as Google received more than twice that! But the last time I searched for info, Google took me directly to Wikipedia.
That’s soon going to change if ‘knol’ has its way. On December 13th, Udi Manber, a Vice President of Engineering at Google created quite a stir (check out the official Blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html) when he declared that providing search results would simply not do and that Google would provide answers too. Poised as a competitor to Wikipedia by many, Google positions knol as follows “…meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read”. And their goal “… 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”. Sounds kind of scary if you ask me!
Based on a similar collaborative wiki platform, knol would provide authors with tools to create and link articles and contents. But it differs from Wikipedia in that it emphasises the author i.e. there could be competing authors and ipso facto knols.
And Google has made its stand clear ‘Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content.’ And that ‘At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads.’ This is all too well for a company that goes by the slogan ‘Don’t be Evil’. Gives me the tingles, if you catch my drift. Still in beta (invite only) stage, the best source of information still remains Wikipedia for most.
From being a number 2 (or a 3) search engine to acquisitions left and right, Google has slowly (but steadily) built an ecosystem around itself. ‘Google’ around for more info (sounds kind of ironic, if you ask me!). Now if only I can Google where my left sock is…
(just realised I blog on Google :P)
