Google's Answer to Wikipedia
Google is rolling out a new service - Knol - that it expects to compete with Wikipedia. I hope this new service is successful, but I suspect that in practice it will be different enough from Wikipedia that the two services won't really be competitors. Knol could almost become a pseudo-blog service.
It seems that Knol is attempting to answer the criticisms that have been aimed at Wikipedia. Authors can not be anonymous. The authors can choose to allow others to edit their "knol"... or not. And there won't be any definitive knol on any subject. If 14 people have different ideas on how to make buttermilk pancakes, then there will be 14 knols on the subject.
More here.
Comments
Most people's knols are not currently displayed on the site when they log out of their own account and do a search for their knol.
Posted by: Anonymous | July 24, 2008 10:16 PM
14 different ideas about how to make buttermilk pancakes makes the world a better place. 14 (or 140) different explanations of the Battle of Hastings (or, say, the JFK assassination, 9/11, the moon landing) don't add to the amount of knowledge in the world -- they would make knowledge harder to find.
The filtering and rating features will be very important here.
Posted by: Phil Bowermaster | July 25, 2008 06:38 AM