Google Seeks Knowledge

"It's good to be the King"
~ From the movie, History of the World: Part I (1981)

Must be fun to be Google, eh?

With money being no object and the entire world at your fingers tips you can do anything. Buy a country... save the declining dollar... or invent the next Wikipedia.

What's that?

Yep, Google is creating a new service called "Knol" that is being positioned to be the next social encyclopedia. Going after the Wikipedia Internet space.

Knol?

Sounds weird, but so did a Wiki back when it was launched. The knol is meant to be a "unit of knowledge."

The project is in closed trials right now with no word on when it will be open to the public.

According to the Google blog:

"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 organized 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."

And that is where the knol comes in... a new and simple way to share knowledge online.

Knol won't be a community effort like Wiki but will highlight authors. So if Joe Marketer is an expert on paid search he can set up a Knol page on Google and share that knowledge to online readers.

We'll see...

There is so much content online now that is crap, the question is... will YOUR be Knol worthy?

And what type of filter will Google create to stop it from being a commercial marketplace?

...can't wait to see it in action.

Bottom line is... this makes a whole lot of sense... as this will help Google reach its goal of answering every query. And, of course, it will always end up in the top ten results.

Is the fact that Google is now not just presenting the content but also now creating it bother anyone? Does it throw up a red flag to any of you?

Hmmm...

For more info, see the original blog post announcing the project:
Encouraging people to contribute knowledge