VentureBeat - Latest Comments in Google’s Knol, a challenge to Wikipedia?

Re: Google’s Knol, a challenge to Wikipedia?

Song — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 09:47:25 -0000

Jason adds, “The fact that the [Knol] article in the released screenshot was authored by a Stanford University academic is basically all you need to know about how Google views content on the web. It doesn’t count as knowledge until it’s given to you by an expert.”

Re: Google’s Knol, a challenge to Wikipedia?

Eric Rosser Eldon — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:28:14 -0000

Stephen, Google is in the content-hosting business now, not just the search engine business.

Consider: YouTube, Blogger, Pages, etc. Yes, these sites help Google make money through running Google ads.

Google is threatened by Wikipedia because Wikipedia one-ups content -- such as blog posts on Blogger -- within Google's own search results.

That means people go to Wikipedia instead of sites that serve Google ads.

Google then loses money. Knol seems designed to counter that.

Re: Google’s Knol, a challenge to Wikipedia?

Jitendra — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 12:21:30 -0000

This is interesting...Organizing content around people is a really important idea. I think this is really different from Wikipedia in so much as this is people's based vs Wikipedia is content based.

Re: Google’s Knol, a challenge to Wikipedia?

GOOG should trade as EVIL — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 11:26:06 -0000

When will people cut through the noise and realize that Google has become as evil as Microsoft back in its heyday?

I look forward to the day when we will have an anti-trust trial looking into legitimacy of tying services to search engine to shut out competitors - just like Microsoft had with their desktop OS.

Re: Google’s Knol, a challenge to Wikipedia?

Stephen van Egmond — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 09:44:43 -0000

It's still unclear how Wikipedia could be considered a "threat" to Google. What, because people *go there*? Because they don't run ads? Ludicrous.

This is, at least, an interesting to the topic of expert authority, which Wikipedia has struggled with.

Lest anyone forget, Wikimedia Foundation's annual budget is less than $5 million.

Re: Google’s Knol, a challenge to Wikipedia?

David Gerard — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 05:30:55 -0000

The PNG example (http://www.google.com/image... shows a CC-by-3.0 tag. As far as I'm concerned as a Wikipedian, that's a BIG WIN for Wikipedia and what we do - making free content *normal and expected*. If they require contributions to be under a proper free content licence, then I'm a BIG FAN of this endeavour. I've already suggested on foundation-l that if Google commits to a proper free content licence for all Knol content, that WMF should publicly encourage the move.

Same reason Citizendium succeeding would be a big win for what we do - it's not competition, it's expanding the pool of unencumbered knowledge.