Google's Wikipedia Rival, Knol, Goes Public is it or will it beat wikipedia

[etycto 0]

well like it says google realeaced a wikipedia rival, check this article from webware. i went there to try it out but there wasnt a lot of topics to look at so i cant say it's great now but you know google everybody loves them it's only a matter of time before they probably kill wikipedia.

 

i think this has an up side because it's not ment for just rendom anonomous writing but it displays the author or authors of the article so it's more reliable, especialy if writen by a proffessional in that field. so i hope this one gets far and has a lot more articles soon

[bittr 0]

It just might be my first impression, but I think Google's aproach is distancing itself from the concept of encyclopedias.Encyclopedias are like knowledge brought together, a lot of informations about a topic in one place, brought there by different people.Even in its pure meaning, I think of encyclopedias as just anonymous peoples' work, gathering informations about different subjects.And Wikipedia is really good, I'd be surprised if Google could do something better.

[klusk 0]

if you ask me ....Can anyone beat Wikipedia and become a more dominant online encyclopedia....i won't think twice to say NO...but with Google...I don't know... they have always come up with great surprises....may be, because its google..people will think giving it a try....but still ...fat chance..let's see ...

[sylenzednuke 0]

i think this has an up side because it's not ment for just rendom anonomous writing but it displays the author or authors of the article so it's more reliable, especialy if writen by a proffessional in that field. so i hope this one gets far and has a lot more articles soon

I think of that as the exact down-side.
It can't be as collective and global as Wikipedia and besides there are always views opposing each other in various Scientific fields especially when it comes to experts of that field. Wikipedia is reliable too since every input is later evaluated by the community and all instances of vandalism are rectified soon.

I really don't think Google will make much with Knol. Google can't re-invent the wheel. It didn't do all that great with Blogger and I don't think it will do all that good with this service too.

[Nabb 0]

Knol looks to be quite different from Wikipedia, as the articles don't have the 'anybody can edit' touch to them. Due to being quite new, Knol also has an extremely small database of information, for example a search for 'cake' returned no results.Information is much more spread than in Wikipedia - The authors name and checksums in the URL means I can't simply type a word I'm searching for at the end of a link to find information about it (e.g. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cake).Another point where Wikipedia is better is the way articles are linked. In Wikipedia, learning random information by using 'See also' list can even be, to some degree, fun! I don't see this happening in Knol as not only is there no visible equivalent to 'See also', articles are much more specialized.Overall, I feel that Wikipedia is much better than Knol. But I'm probably biased to Wikipedia...Knol might be better for looking up medical information though!

Edited July 24, 2008 by Nabb (see edit history)

[bsdpowa 0]

How is Knol a competition? It's not near to Wikipedia.I would have to agree with klusk on this one. I would also say nobody can beat Wikipedia in what it does but since this is Google, who knows. They are full of surprises. Anyway, Knol looks more like a knowledgebase and not like encyclopaedia so I don't see how it would compete with Wikipedia directly. What I like about it is an option of comments and rating of articles (knols) and it's not true articles will be closed to public editing. This is totally up to the author as he will be visible to everybody.

[rayzoredge 2]

You never know.Google's been on the prowl on a ton of different side projects that most people aren't even aware of, even though it's open to the public. I was personally at a work site where they had workers with sophisticated scanning machines taking images of book pages... so you will be able to access a virtual library with Google soon, methinks. (I wouldn't expect it for a while, but I'm usually surprised and proven wrong on that matter. ) This is another side project and since Google is a well-known name around the globe, people will flock to it just to see what it's about. Most of the starting user base will be people who like and trust Google to put out new, cool stuff.Remember when we thought that Yahoo was the best of search engines? How about AltaVista? Lycos? Do we even remember that they were search engines? I used to be a loyal fan of Infoseek.com, then some metacrawler, then AltaVista, then a9 (when Amazon had their promotion), and then finally Google. Knol might be our next source of information next to Wikipedia, if it can catch up to what Wiki already has for an encyclopedic database. Will you fuel the Google empire in the future and cast away Wiki? I just took a look at Knol and I am a Wiki fanboy, but this could give people the opportunity to throw out their expertise and be recognized for it. What kind of stinks is that it looks like once someone covers a topic/subject, it's locked and whatever further contributions anyone wants to make to it will be redundant. On the flipside, the original author of the first article may not be aware of several aspects of his or her own work and others cannot throw in important inserts of information that would benefit the reader in any way. (If you want to suggest inserting information into comments, look at YouTube comments and then think about it. )I see that a lot of medical professionals have already jumped the gun and made their own articles, but on the same token, are they just rehashing other people's work and calling it their own just to be able to say that "I write for Knol?" I'm not talking about plagiarism... I'm talking about the massive amount of references that a lot of "professionals" have under their work. It's like someone read up on the topic and rehashed it to make them look like a subject matter expert. If that's the case, we could all be professionals in any given field...It will be an interesting alternative, but Knol will have to offer more if it will want to become an alternative resource name in my eyes. We already use Google as a verb and turn to Wiki for our questions... will Google further impact our Internet culture that much?

[jlhaslip 4]

It will be interesting to see this "Expert Information Exchange" develop.
It appears that they are attracting only input from experts, particularly in the Health area, for now.

Maybe I should write an article about Moderating a Forum.

Link to the Google Knol here: http://knol.google.com/

[DeM0nFiRe 0]

The fact that it isn't just anonymous can be a good thing, because that would make it more reliable than Wikipedia. There are a lot of things where Wikipedia will just ignore some part of history and say that something else was first, or something else was biggest. Maybe some experts will tell it true

[SaNJ 0]

wiki is an encyclopedia where knol can be just used as a reference...For now knol is quite small and different from...wikipedia....by small I mean their databasethis is what the product manager said"In the long term we hope that encyclopedias, such as Wikipedia, would use knols as references... If Knol is successful, it will help Wikipedia."One good thing about knol is that ....they are giving some name to the authers....Google has got a grand reputation, but beating wiki....is far away now...but after sometime as their database increases...and if they make it more user friendly...as they always do....they may get close to wiki...best of luck google....

Edited July 24, 2008 by SaNJ (see edit history)

[Stridr 0]

I believe what we need is relevant information, and Wikipedia in my opinion is far too inacurate. Knol would be hard to market since Wikipedia has taken over this area for a significant time, though bearing the name 'Google' will make it easier.

[Forbez 0]

Well this is going to be VERY intresting! If they will or will not be Wiki, Wiki is already well started andf running a long time.Good luck to Google attempting to take down the powerhouse of Wiki.

[adriantc 0]

I don't see this project with good eyes... Don't get me wrong, Google has done some wonderful things like GMail and Google Earth, but after visiting it's website Knol is way back compared to Wikipedia. Not to mention the renown and the volume of information which makes Knol a midget compared to the all mighty Wikipedia. But of course Knol has one distinct advantage... it is a Google product and will benefit not only from the experience of Google, but also from the advertisemtn capabilities of Google.But the main reason I don't see this with good eyes is because once it will become true competition to Wikipedia, the volume of information will be split in two. We won't have to search one encyclopedia, but two. And encyclopedia isn't supposed to mean all our knowledge in once single place. Until know everybody looking to share some knowlege would simply go to Wikipedia and post them. With two different encyclopedias things will not be so easy. Hopefully they will let people double post so it won't make a difference which encyclopedia you use.On the other hand I have heard that this new project of Google is a response to a Wikipedia project that is planning to build a rival search engine. If you ask me if Knol has small chances to win the competition with Wikipedia, a Wikipedia search engine to rival Google is fantasy. Google is here to stay for at least a couple more years!

[Lyon2 0]

I am a fan and a user of the wikipedia website, despite the fact that the wikipedia website has a lot of knowledge for us to learn, their website and their project is free, so we could not expect it to last forever nor to be completely professional, but it is nonetheless, and i am one big fan of their project.I just wish i could donate more money to their project, the point is that i did my part, and things for wikipedia are were very difficult in the past, without too many donators, and now with such a big competitor, i can not know if things are going to be worse, because as you should know, wikipedia needs visitors and donations fro mtheir visitors/members.Help wikipedia, which is one of the most usefull projects on the internet for adults, students and professionals.