News broke late yesterday that Google was preparing to launch a new site call Knol that will combine parts of Wikipedia and Squidoo to create a new user generated authoritative online knowledgebase of everything.
All the details aren’t fully clear yet. What we do know is that Google will offer a revenue share from each page: “If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads,” although we don’t know at this stage how much. We know that unlike Squidoo or other sites who offer a percentage share of advertising revenue, Knol cuts out the middle man. Think of it this way; presuming Google normally splits 50% (no one knows the exact number, at it changes at different levels) of revenue from an Adsense unit with a normal publisher, in the case of someone like Squidoo or even a blog with writers writing on a rev share model they then get a percentage of the 50%; Knol on the other hand could offer a proper 50% of the actual original cost of the ad, not a percentage of the percentage: that is not only a great big advantage, it’s also verging on unfair competition.
One of the recurring themes in the comments on the earlier post and in discussions I’ve had on Twitter and elsewhere since the announcement is that people are already questioning whether this is a step too far for Google. As Paul Short said in a comment:
Is anyone else seeing a shift in the way Google is doing things? I’m seeing a company whose core product relied on aggregating and sifting content from other sites, to a move to them building (or buying) content (or the underlying technology) that they have ultimate control over.
He’s right. Google is moving away from simply indexing the worlds content to being a content provider itself. Of course Google in response would argue that it is simply facilitating user generated content (like with Blogger), that ultimately they are the host as opposed to the creator, but it still competes with existing content providers, many of whom rely on Google search results for their living. Which takes us to question of search results.
Google has already said that Knol results will be in Google’s index, presumably on the first page, and very possibly at the top: “Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results.” Google wants Knol to be an authoritative page: “A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read” and that’s a direct challenge to Wikipedia. Some TechCrunch commenters have suggested that this might be the end of Wikipedia, but that’s a fanciful proposition. Wikipedia isn’t going anywhere, but having said that they do rely on Google for a good portion of their traffic. If Wikipedia is replaced in the first few results on Google with pages from Knol, Wikipedia traffic will decrease, and possibly as a consequence so will broader participation on Wikipedia.
I’ve long since subscribed to the “Google is my lord and savior” argument and gave up caring about privacy and other such things years ago, but Knol moves into new territory. Moves by Google into mobile phones with Android and the bid for mobile spectrum in the United States should be welcomed, because they bring new competition into a traditional market; likewise Google’s attempts to break into radio and TV advertising. Knol on the other hand brings the power of Google into a marketplace that is already rich with competition, and a marketplace where Google can use its might to crush that competition by favoring pages from Knol over others, on what is the worlds most popular search engine.
Is Google’s Knol a step too far? Leave a comment or vote below:
Is Google Knol a step too far?
- No
-
Yes
Total Votes: 5001
Started: December 14, 2007
Um, Hello,
Does anyone remember The original Feature-set of Google Video???
What about the deal between Mentos and coke tht it brokered.
…..And EVERY single other Product!
Google is playing a game of 3D-chess, This is part of a long road-map that people are just slowly waking up to, some of the things that some of the experience management wanted to do at other companies and inevitable visions from Android, to dodgeball (yes!) to Blogger to This to spectrum to cloud-computing to apps to domains and still so much more -the biggest 3d-jigsaw.
It’s a combination of technical idealism and inevitable business need for more income-stream/market-access; It is business, it is growth, it is what’s needed to get to the ambition, it is what’s needed to justify the shre-price -but in a comparission, who of google or Yahoo cares more about content search neutrality……..
Yours kindly,
Shakir Razak
Find some television show’s content offensive? Don’t watch.
Don’t like Google’s attempt at usurping Wikipedia? Don’t click on it in the search results.
“Do no evil.” ….cough, bullsh!t!
Don’t you think you’re jumping way ahead of yourself?
“Google has already said that Knol results will be in Google’s index, presumably on the first page, and very possibly at the top”
Do you know they’re going to do that? They have a good system going that ranks all their search results based on many factors so why would they want to meddle with it in such a way as to compromise people’s confidence in it? Refining page rank has been something that Google has spent a lot of effort doing so why would they throw all that out the window?
I’m sure the knols will be ranked just like the other results, based on their own merits. To do otherwise would be search suicide. Don’t you think that if they boosted all the knols to the front and the service really got popular, pretty soon all the search results you’re gonna get are just gonna be knols for the first few pages?
“Knol on the other hand brings the power of Google into a marketplace that is already rich with competition, and a marketplace where Google can use its might to crush that competition by favoring pages from Knol over others, on what is the worlds most popular search engine.”
It’s still early days for people to start making comments like that. Let’s wait and see how they’re going to implement the service…
HS
I agree on all fronts, which is why I haven’t once said this is what they’ll do, but looking at it on the balance of things, they aren’t going to launch something and then no support it as much as they can now, are they? They may will mix and match, and despite some comments on the other thread I cant see them knocking off Wikipedia completely in search results, but I’d bet Knol pages were up there close to or above Wikipedia results.
I wrote a post about the change in the ‘tone’ of google weeks ago. I fear Google is becoming another Microsoft. (Yes, I imply that people hate Microsoft)
But then, we must allow Google to do whatever they can. Let the search results degrade. Then only a Goole killer will come. In effect the search results will be good in the new Google killer, and so it goes on… When you provide good quality service, you win. When the qualty of your service drops, your competetor wins.
Duncan, great post.
It’s remarkable how smart these Google guys are at strategy. The recent “wipe-out” of Pay Per Post demonstrated this. With all these new developments I’m sure they wanted to see the backlash (if any). It’s really become very simple. If you advertise (as a business) you better pick Google as your medium. If not, you will suffer.
I also believe that Wikipedia will survive. BUT, the traffic is going to plunge when Google implements Knol and updates there algorithm to: knol search= +% relevance and Wikipidia match= -% and no greater than top 5 natural search…………(hypothetical)
Maybe I need to get a job at Google. As they may be the only company to survive a nuclear winter as we head into what looks to be a disastrous 2008 economic outlook.
They are starting to show show some muscle and it’s looking scary for others….
@4, universal search? 1st page of Google search is already full of Google properties (youtube, google images, google products, and now, Google Knol?)
What I don’t get about this announcement is that Knol is not already open for contributions.
I don’t remember too many Google announcements where you can’t immediately sign up/start doing something.
This WILL diminish Wikipedia out of sight.
The tools are obviously similar to wikipedia with edit buttons and all, but you get paid in full for your views with no possibility of somebody deleting your contribution because the view was not neutral enough, for example.
Also, your Knol pages will have guaranteed immediate Google indexing, something what outside pages and sites do not have. THAT is huge.
I can see a lot of people going from publishing their own sites to doing Knol pages, especially if the ads placement on Knol pages are optimized enough according to Google’s own heatmap studies.
Web is one huge rollercoaster, ain’t it?
Google’s an advertising company with a model that hinges on the relevance of its search results. Nothing — not Open Social, not Maps with Street View, not Knol — changes that.
If and when knols rank highly, it’ll be for the same reason Wiki pages tend to rank highly (read: for their relevance to the search terms).
For Google to return results any other way would compromise the integrity of its search. And that would undermine its advertising model.
Google’s big, not dumb.
the biggest problem i see is google having control over all that content, making you get the information they want you to get, no matter if they are not the creator themselves.
Wikipedia will obviously suffer from this, but at the end of the day thats their problem. If Knol will offer better content, people will step to Knol but for a reason. Wikipedia articles mostly are in the top3, so if I want to inform myself i would read both Knol and wikipedia and decide which one is better.
Since wikipedia is not a company who wants to make profits there isnt much to destroy either. Eventually all the authors now have the opportunity to warn some $ for their writing efforts.
Duncan..Google wants to hire you.
‘how smart these Google guys are at strategy’ ?
I would suggest it is rather obvious that search in its current setup isn’t where it should be. Trying to improve the relevancy of what people get as a result of search is clearly an obvious move – how you go about that is the question which numerous different companies have very different views upon.
The question for me however is whether the approach google is taking will help searchers find what they want more quickly. From the somewhat limited information provided so far this just looks to be a prettier, more restrictive version of wikipedia. Could this perhaps be a counter move to the search service that Jimmy Wales is looking to launch?
The first line from the google company overview is “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”. Perhaps this needs reworking…
From the Google announcement : “Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors.”
Sounds like an open invitation to spammers if you ask me. Especially if these knols are going to be ranked more highly in the search results.
Out of 8 new posts in my TechCrunch feed this morning, 5 were on Google. Can we please have a story about Facebook just for some variety?
Hi,
I agree, people are getting way ahead of themselves here, especially with some of the immediate paranoid hyperbole -this is a [very] long game.
If google doesn’t treat this property like Universal search, then it will simply wait for organic growth through people posting and self-linking from other sites, when they have ownership, they’ll care more.
Google gets immediate data on everything that goes through its network,
It looks to me as among the obviousness of seeing the referals to wikipedia without monetisation, it’s probably also seen the links to sites like answers.com, findarticles, zoominfo, blog-networks et al -and this is simply a way to get a lot of profesional-ish content-producers, rather than the meanderers of most bloggers, onto it’s own patch;
maybe google might even have to compete for these type of people/content, but with the advantages of an incumbent monopoly!
Is there also a possibility, that it is also explicitly being reactive (early] to the potential threat from companies like mahalo and Kozmix???
Yours kindly,
Shakir Razak
Increasingly google is looking like a company with no real direction. They want to be everywhere at the same time. How long can they sustain this?
RK
http://www.rent...drealestate.com
Rental and Real Estate Social Network and Classifieds
@10 kayoone
good points!
@12 jamie
….“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”.
You are correct this needs to be worked on. The day they went public this lip service statement went out the window. There job now is simple – create shareholder value at any cost. Oh ya, and along the way dominate all aspects to the greatest money printing business known to mankind – the internet.
Off the subject, but, for all those who laughed at Mahalo, he may get the last laugh since Yahoo, Ask and Microsoft may come calling…… who would have thought, geez!
good move for them
but being late in this field
will not do them good
rc
trading tennis blog
Kudos on the PollCrunch!!!
The still domain names available???
Hey, you can always head over the Quarter Wiki for 100% revenue. Then again, Google does have a massive user base so you could make a lot of money writing these “authorative” pages…
Let me restate this – “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Restated – “Google’s mission is to overtake Wikipedia and Squidoo through its new project Knols Project. (and take over the world of course)”
Google can do as it wishes, but if it becomes too diversified with multiple competing interests… well… there is a name for that… Yahoo! I could see a slow demise in the cards as they begin to compete head on with those that actually make Google good… content providers!
Jon
This could be SEO gold if its automated and mahlo will be dead in the water which is a shame.
I think google could end up with an anti trust on this one if these results come up first and all the companies and wikipedia band together and take them to court.
Wikipedia is awful. I would rather have experts write and update articles.
Hello,
Actually, this reminds me of a lot like how the BBC is treated in the UK by anyone who’se not its commercial partner when it enters any new market/segment/feature, because of its power to crush any competition with its Virtual Monopoly -As the BBC is thought of by EVERYONE (except maybe itself ;p ) as a Public-Service, just like google now is!
Also, not yet, but in decades time, maybe Google will face the Internet-equivalent of the wto/ftc/eu creating Baby-Bells/googles, maybe asset-distribution done the way Yahoo closed Y!Photo’s.
In ALL the excitement and HYpe, It should be remembered we are still at the feet of the mountains, and most of the peoples of the world don’t have the Internet, just a fraction do, and the priorities for those who don’t are clean water and electricity and medicine and clothing and food…….
Yours kindly,
Shakir Razak
Google is doing the same thing with Video Search and YouTube!
Video search is probably the most important video access method on the net (very much like any other media format). Google used to have video search right on the homepage beside “Images”.
Then, Google acquired YouTube and added it to the video search result. Later, they announced the Video-Site-Map format and started indexing other video services into the video search results (though it always seemed like results from YouTube showed up first, not to mention that you can preview only YouTube Videos from within the search results..). Later on, Google changed the page layout, but video was still #3 after web & image search.
However – something happened there…
For a while now, many people were using YouTube to search for video, rather than Google.. maybe this trend started to change? It was obvious that searching for videos at Google provides more results from more websites, including YouTube thanks to the widely adopted Video SiteMap..
What happened next? Google took “Video” from the third place – to the last, hidden behind a menu, 16th place!! (I’m not joking) and TechCrunch once demonstrated what this means.. – 1:3 of the traffic.
A few weeks later (days ago), Google added YouTube as a “Type” of searching, right beside Video – as an alternative to Video search. (currently live on Google.com). Why would anyone need that if YouTube is already indexed in Video Search? to get less results? Pure YouTube Shouldn’t that be done from YouTube.com?
YouTube is the only brand in Google’s list of search types.
Will Google stay fateful to it’s promise to let users search the entire world’s information or they prefer that users will search in google’s own services? ( thus, making sure that everyone submit content to google’s services and not to the competition.)
Can’t YouTube compete fairly? It is a very Microsoft-ish move. Are they going to start leveraging their search service to kill the competition in all the other services which rely on search for substantial amount of their traffic? Is it because Google Tips didn’t work for them, so they try something else?
Do no Evil? What’s next? Maybe an alternative to Blog Search: Blogger.com only search!
Thanks for the hat-tip, Duncan
I’ve been doing more thinking about this, as I have many times in the past and I feel the Google antitrust issue is getting strong enough now for authorities to take notice.
I guess I shouldn’t speak too loudly though, since I run AdSense ads on my sites, run my RSS feeds through Google-owned FeedBurner, my videos are on Google-owned YouTube and all my email is filtered through Gmail… just the way they like it!
Jesus…
Now that pagerank has lost it’s value (and novelty), maybe it’s time for Google search.
They are falling in same trap as others did – i.e. preferential/filtered content over algorithmic content
-Ashish
http://www.pluggd.in
I worked in one of the larger advertising networks, and they too saw value from making a foray into publishing. The CEO explained that this gave them a guaranteed level of displays for adverts, and thus they could afford to lose a couple of big publishers without it fatally affecting revenue.
Unfortunately, they are now figuring out that it is rather difficult to produce quality content themselves, or encourage users to do it for them. As a result, they are either paying vast sums for good content to be written (something like $50 per paragraph for some stories), or paying for lots of spam to be removed.
As for ‘Knol’ vs ‘Wikipedia’ – perhaps Knol will only be able to attract mercenaries who will fight over the top articles with lots of page views, leaving the ‘long tail’ of unpopular articles with few advertisers to continue heading over to Wikipedia.
I hope so anyway, since I would like to get through the day without having to rely on Google to help me breathe.
“..should be welcomed, because they bring new competition into a traditional market..”
Wish Google can spend its might in coming up with a new Desktop Operating system to compete with Windows. Badly Needed.
Yes, Knol is Wikipedia by Google. But it has better features for author to monetize written page, related search box and Peer review widget.
I think it is great to have a better version of wikipedia and I am sure Google will do greater job in this area.
I would certainly not advocate the monopoly, but you got to be smarter and quicker to kill the beast, other they stories will repeat itself.
“presuming Google normally splits 50% (no one knows the exact number, at it changes at different levels) of revenue from an Adsense unit with a normal publisher”
Yep and how much does Google make off Wikipedia, which sticks to its donation-supported, no-ads, model? Well, 50% of zero is …
Knol is less about turning 50% into 100% and more about running ads against this content in the first place.
from: http://www.thea...6812806297.html
“Most material written today was in some way based on Google and Wikipedia – and if those did not reflect reality, a distortion was possible, the researchers said, recalling biased contributions frequently placed on Wikipedia.
Furthermore there is some indication of cooperation between Google and Wikipedia. Sample statistics showed that randomly selected Wiki entries consistently ranked higher on Google than on other search engines, the Graz team said.”
This is one week old. And now google create Knol?
What I’m really afraid of, is that google using search profiles may orient users towards differents version of a topic. Thus, the information you’ll find on Knole will depend of your profile.
After personalized search, maybe we’ll find personalized encyclopedia.
How many time does it take to Google to replace Eurasia by Eastasia?
@33 Janos. The “study” you mention is from an Austrian guy who is competing with Google in the Business Search Area (he started Hyperwave and writes science fiction novels) and looking for public funding from government for his projects.
They took articles from Wikipedia and looked in Google, Live.com and Yahoo how they rank, and SURPRISE they ranked well in Google… that’s quite normal and true for all other trusted sources (like this blog) too, if the topic is in the header and getting a lot of backlinks that are trustworthy you get good ranking….
If you digg deeper into the “study” you will find a lot of strange conclusions without evidence.
I think the truth behind this is that Google sees the limitations of Wikipedia – starting KNOLs will accelerate change a lot.
Google shareholders aren’t complaining….
Giduu – A very catchy unique domain name for sale perfect for a Social Network Web2.0 style portal or a search engine. Current bid for this domain stands at $1,500. Any offer will be considered, don’t delay. This domain will prove priceless to the right candidate. Go to Sedo.com and search for giduu.com
This is a little sad cause I am in the process of development of a site like Knol. But not being Google, and believing in my idea gives me a little advantage
See ya in couple of months.
The GoogleBlog says,
“The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors”
And the Screen shot has an Author’s Photo and Profile.
I am wondering how are they going to do it if there are 100s of contributors for an article…
Google is a media company. The shell game has ended. Actually, it ended when they bought YouTube. They are BIG MEDIA’S worst nightmare.
Google’s already tuning out the blogosphere.
They’ve made a conscious choice to filter out the “noise” from blogs in search results and deemphasized blog content bigtime starting in early December.
Many blog posts now don’t even make it into the SERPs at all, let alone anywhere near the first two pages of results…
Knol’s just another way for them to control information access.
here’s what’s gonna happen : exactly the same as what happened with domain names.
the first knolers will take the most popular keywordss, in order to get potentially the most revenue from ads. for instance, say, you start the article on “Britney Spears”. chances are you will get more revenues from adsense than on a subject about some niche subject.
and here’s the trick : some knolers will just create “fake” articles, just a few paragraphs copied/pasted from ehow or wikipedia,or even something not even related to the subject (remember: google doesn’t want to become an editor) and then put the keyword on auction on ebay or specialized website, just like what happens with domain names buyers.
thus we’ll come to a point where knol keywords may be monetized or even auctioned on ebay, who knows…
the only way to prevent that, would be to authorize – unlike wikipedia – multiple articles for the same keyword combination in knol search engine. and then, let viewers rank the article, just like in yahoo Q/A.
Relevant and authoritative… two qualities that affect the quality of search results. As an author you can control the relevance of your copy whereas authoritative is an opinion that can only be bestowed by third parties.
One must look broadly at Google to see where the synergies are. For example, as Google grabs the content of books, for any give subject “X”, which do you think will be more relevant and authoritative, a book about X or a blog about X, an X book author or an X blog author?
That covers the content issue. Then, putting an ad on every book page covers the revenue side. The Q & A compensation plan leads the way to Google becoming the publishing platform of the future.
If you are an author, why dick around with a publisher when you can let Google “print” your book and send you the revenue? 90% of the language in a publishing contract is about who has rights to what, due to copyright laws. If you take the position that copyright is dead, and Google the defacto copyright holder (based on its pervavise abuse) then the contract language becomes simple enough for a clickwrap agreement.
You write it (or shoot it), Google organizes it, publishes it, distributes it, and pays you based on ad revenue rev share. If users have questions, you can answer those too.
Can somebody please get Google to produce my toilet paper?
Thanks.
Whether knol’s content will be better than wikipedia isn’t the question. Google’s a monopoly owner of search rankings (80% or so market share in the US) When so much of the search results is attributed to the authority of the source: for example, The New York times, .edu and .gov sites, it’s hard to believe knol will not achieve an unfair advantage.
Every new site on the web wants to be the authoritative source on something, but they have to do that through good content over time. The marketplace of ideas weighs in with links, and so the site ranks higher in Google’s algorithm. When Google considers its own sites authoritative, and gets to write the algorithm, that’s unfair competition.
how come google doesn’t even own knol.com domain name ? i’ve checked and knol.com is a german or norvegian industrial cleaning company (not sure) … they’ll make big bucks for sure …
Doesn’t this seem like too big of a conflict of interests for Google to do? If Knol is run by Google, and is supposedly validated by Google’s own ranking system…
Even if they don’t openly abuse the connection, the potential to do so should be enough to get a few of the right people thinking “Hey, uh…no.”
edit: http://www.knol.com (german website) suddenly stopped working a few minutes ago. a sign of a domain name sale ?
Google stands a lot more to lose by risking people’s confidence in their search engine than they have to gain by usurping Wikipedia. This is just another opportunity at growth, whats wrong with that.
Although I am a huge Google fan, how is this really any different than MS bundling WMP or IE with Windows. Users are still free to install other software but the argument has already been made (rather successfully) that these actions violate anti-trust laws. These results show up in the index, isn’t that kind of the same thing? The Google search engine is our OS and the results are what we are able to do with it (ie. the apps). Perhaps if the Windows was free like Google or Google charged money for usage like MS it would be a different story in the eyes of the law, but conceptually these approaches are very similar.
I don’t think that Google has gone too far here, but it will be interesting to see how things play out, as per usual.
Listen the only way to defeat Google is to come up with a search engine that gives it’s money made on adertising to help others. Not public but with open books were not even teh CEO makes over 200k. People will use it.
The only thing that bothers me about this is the unfair cutting out of the middle man. This is like Microsoft building a pc and not charging themselves for the OS license.
At the point where Google starts acting more like a search engine for Google content then I’ll gladly switch to one which acts like an internet search engine. They can do whatever they want (legal/illegal/ethical/unethical). It will just affect whether or not I use their service.