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Google’s Knol to Challenge Wikipedia
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Google has announced that they have created an online tool called “knol” (short for knowledge) which will encourage authors to contribute signed encyclopedic entries into a massive knowledge base. Social tools such as ratings, reviews, and comments have been implemented as well. So far, this seems to be a direct competitor for existing community-based encyclopedias such as Wikipedia with the distinction that Google’s entries, or “knols”, will not be written by the masses but by one authoritative source.
“The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content.”
At this time the knol project is available by invitation only.
