News of Google most recent project, Knol, came out late last Thursday without, as far as I can tell, much in the way of press pre-briefings. All the major publications were late to the story. Blogs hit it fast, but had nothing to go on other than the brief blog post put up by Google’s Udi Manber announcing the project. Our initial story on Knol is here.
From a product perspective, Knol is not much different than existing products like Squidoo and Hubpages. It’s a new knowledge base for authors. Anyone, eventually, will be able to write on any topic they choose. Google will provide authoring tools, store the information, allow others to comment and suggest edits, add ads with the author’s approval, and provide traffic via their search engine.
But Knol isn’t really aimed at Squidoo and Hubpages. It’s much more likely that Google is jealously eyeing the massive traffic that flows through its search engine to Wikipedia. As Nick Carr has noted, Wikipedia continues to climb and climb in search results for many top search terms.
More Ad Inventory Needed, ASAP
Wikipedia, a non-profit, has stubbornly resisted any efforts to monetize its pages. Google would kill to supply ads to Wikipedia. Barring that, competing with them makes a lot of sense.
Google needs to grow revenue to support their valuation. And for that, they need ad inventory. It wasn’t surprising when Google started hosting news directly and allowing comments (that = page views). So the idea of them hosting a knowledge base shouldn’t be surprising, either.
Authors have a choice - they can have ads or not. But if they have ads, they can only choose Google. Many authors are going to include ads, and Google will get extra inventory.
Delicious Timing
Wikipedia has caused more problems than just refusing to take Google’s ads. They are also launching a much anticipated search engine this month via their for-profit arm, Wikia (Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales hates it when Wikia is called that, but it’s damned hard to tell where Wikipedia ends and Wikia begins sometimes). Google isn’t likely to be particularly scared of Wikia’s new search engine, but it has probably been a little annoying for them to watch all the press about the upcoming “Google Killer.”
Google doesn’t usually pre-announce products before launch. in this case they did. Why? Perhaps as a reminder to Wikipedia that competition can flow both ways.
Anyone Remember Google Base?
As a content management system, Knol is a kissing cousin to Google Base, a classified ad platform that Google launched in late 2005. Google Base has gone exactly nowhere - if anything it’s a spam farm and nothing more. But at the time of its launch the New York Times and others heralded it as a major disruptive force to the classified ads world. Knol may be Google Base with a little more strategic thought applied.
No Conflicts Here, Move Along
Google says that Knol pages will be indexed into their search engine but will have no special ranking. That’s a little bit untrue, since they’ll be hosted by Google and will have the advantage of Google’s hefty PageRank to lift them in search results. And since no one will be auditing Google to ensure that Knol pages are treated just like everyone else, there are bound to be claims of conflict of interest. The fact is, Google will make money from Knol, and so they’ll have a financial interest in moving people to those pages. That makes them less believable in the role of a neutral gatekeeper.
Google is now synonymous with search. Offering Google Knol and putting it in the search results is analogous to Microsoft offering Office for the Windows platform. Sure, anyone can compete with Office, but Microsoft has a natural advantage and finds ways of keeping market share. The Knol team will likely do the same over time.
Wikipedia v. Knol
Wikipedia gets massive support from the community because it’s non-profit. Google can’t compete with that, so they’re focusing on putting the authors’ names in lights and giving them a little cash on the side, too. That should help them pull some heavy Wikipedia contributors over to their project.
Very soon we are going to see a lot of Wikipedia content moving wholesale to Knol. Wikipedia content is basically free to use, redistribute, copy, whatever, under the GNU license:
All text in Wikipedia is covered by GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), a copyleft license permitting the redistribution, creation of derivative works, and commercial use of content while authors retain copyright of their work.
Anyone writing for Knol is likely to at least peruse Wikipedia content before publishing. And if they see anything good, they are at liberty to simply lift and copy it over to Knol, and get a adsense check for their time.
So, in a way, Google has found a way to monetize Wikipedia content after all.
In a poll on Friday, TechCrunch readers narrowly said Google hasn’t overstepped its boundaries with Knol. If Knol is a success, those results may be a little different a year from now. In fact, the more successful Knol is, the more uncomfortable people are going to be with Google as gatekeeper and content provider.
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MA absolutely correct.. in the past when i wanted to find something, i’ll google. More recently, i both google, and wikipedia. In fact, a lot of times, wikipedia gave more pertinent and more in-depth answers, but the google sniplets are sprankled all over and hard to spot the authoritative link on a subject, /ac.
I am anxious to see how long it takes google to remove all the wikipedia references in google earth.
Jon
Any thoughts on spam prevention?
Great write-up, this is what TC is all about.
Knol won’t be the death of Wikipedia nor will it be a complete fork but there will be many people who will simply sync Knol with Wikipedia to get the revenue.
However, this could also mean that Knol will contain multiple copies of the same pages.
Find the most popular pages on Wikipedia, copy them to Knol. The CTRL-C business model.
…or Wikipedia could change their licensing.
Google really wants in on everything. I’m not surprised but since they are such a strong company with powerful backing, they may just give wikipedia a run for their zeros….
At the core of knowledge is the ‘validity’ of information. It remains to be seenn how google will validate information stored in its knowledge base. Thomas’ concern about spam is very relevant. Anyone will have the capability to put any information out there
Yup I do see valid and good points put forth by Mike . But there is one permanent question in my mind …… Ive always seen Techcrunch people ( Espcially Mike
) write blogs directly impacting Google . May we ( as readers of Techcrunch 
) know the little strory behind Mike’s hatred towards Google ?????? or is it a way of writing - like criticise/blog something smoking on a BIG SHOT and attract more crowd towards the news ??? 
…. please throw some light on my question Mike 
Kaviraj: I think Mike and Duncan are playing “good cop, bad cop” thing here, Duncan will always write some stories about Google from positive side, and then Mike will opposite that.
Google might have expanded inventory of pageviews.. but there are subjects that have no advertisers.. eg., recently OpenID is a hot topic.. but interestly, no advertisers buy on the openid keyword?? (or rather, google choosing not render the ads regardless of what keyword the advertisers buy?)
Eg., today, a search on openid (just as one of the many examples) shows no sponsor ads (well, at least on my page.. you’re welcome to tell to the contrary:
http://www.google.com.hk/search?q=openid
Google is after $580 million ad revenue that gets generated from Wiki. Google is just a corp like msft and aapl.
i want to opt-in google ads in my wikipedia.
I don’t donate, but i spend so much time on this website….
Open Wikipedia for those who wants… make money … increase resources (and maybe pay a high salary to jimmy so he stops wikia ;-D)
Regarding “That’s a little bit untrue, since they’ll be hosted by Google and will have the advantage of Google’s hefty PageRank to lift them in search results.”
That’s not necessarily correct - if it’s on a different subdomain, there’s no PageRank -type benefit. Just like all the blogging platforms (blogger/blogspot/typepad/wordpress, etc).
Note also that Google own Blogger, but there’s no indication that Blogger benefits in search results from that ownership.
Will they accept external links for references, like wikipedia?
Every time I hear of Google getting into yet another market I am reminded of how powerful this company is—and how they’ve really tricked the entire world. They are hoisted as an example of developing a free service for the masses and then finding a way to make money on it. They are touted as the centralized repository of the world’s best programmers, who’ve melded together in the name of better, open source code, stock options, and free food. But they’ve tricked us all into thinking that they we should share all we’ve created in the hopes of building a better future for all developers. Long Live Google Code!
But where is the open source on Google Search? Where are the algorithms that make PageRank index so well? Why can’t we have access to these recipes that will help us all make better searching tools, and perhaps make the world even easier to index and search? Google isn’t even about to share their formula for success, but they’ll gladly host your code in exhange for reading every single line of it with the license to use any of it at will.
If many say Google is the poster boy for open source, then I must be crazy because I say they are the poster boy CLOSED SOURCE. They make their money ($$$ - this stuff counts) off of search. That code is kept top secret (the fact that this also prevents gaming the system is a happy coincidence and excuse). Then in return they have opened up a variety of tools that encourage us all to share our platforms, javascript libraries and methodology for the world to see. The result is while everyone else is a good citizen in the open source land, Google remains protective of most of the logic that would make searching anything more efficient.
The point? If you hold Google up as the company you admire, then keep your brilliant code close to you and figure out a way to win with it. If you want to truly embrace open source, just understand that if your idea is not just a feature then you’re not just giving good code away to your fellow hackers, but also to a multi-billion dollar company that will try and crush anything open source (Wikipedia) that impacts the revenue from its closed source search product.
Isn’t Knol going to attract money-making schemers to write low-quality content for Knol, just to get listed, generate traffic, and ad clicks? Who will want to read that content then? Who will trust it, if it is being written for profit?
No doubt it must be frustrating for Google to see Wikipedia sitting there, refusing to carry ads, and moving into the Top 10 web sites globally, but the editors at Wikipedia are happy to write and contribute for no compensation. The notion that those writers will leave Wikipedia for Knol isn’t believable to me.
I suspect that 1 year from now Knol will be in the graveyard.
One of the last times Google tried to get together a group of experts around the world for a project of theirs was for Google Answers, a paid Q&A service that has been canceled in the meantime. Lets see how Knol fares.
Parul
http://www.bhopu.com
my twopennyworth: As google is synonymous for search, surely wikipaedia is so for the on-line encyclopaedia. I suggest that it is now too firmly entrenched in the publics minds as the place to go for detailed explanation, to worry about what Google is doing. My daughter referenced it at Uni, my son at grammar school and I in most research. It of course must not be seen as gospel but it is an excellent start point. Its beauty and danger apart form any-one being able to add an article, is that anyone can also challenge and amend an article. How does that impact the Google Knol model, in this case who owns the article and thus who owns the ad revenue?
I also suggest that many of the Google extra products are not that good, poorly thought through and badly designed (eg: the horrible googlemail) , and there are usually many better open source / free competitors.
We should stop trembling with fear every time Google sticks its big toe in a in a puddle or a pond. It can also stub it or get bitten.
Copying Wikipedia content to Knol (and vice versa) would not be possible, since the GNU Free Documentation License isn’t compatible with any of the CC licences - as far as I understand.
Wikipedia is trying to move to a CC-compatible license.
Great analysis on this. I had not thought of the transfer of info from Wikipedia to Knols, and thus monetizing Wikipedia in a back door sort of way. I”m just wondering what options Wikipedia is considering behind closed doors right now. If it were to suddenly turn for-profit, and allow a competing ad network on its pages (MSN, Yahoo) … would that be a good counter punch? Would contributors really abandon Wikipedia if it were suddenly for-profit, or would they gladly stay on board, happy to help Wikipedia thrive, and share some revenue along the way?
google wants everything, like a spoilt child.
whenever a (internet) business develops, sooner or later google buys it or copies it, but never allows co-existence.
soon they’re going to acquire internet itself
DC (point 14) - i’m with you. Everyone (well perhaps not everyone, but a lot of people) seem to view google with rose tinted glasses.
I just don’t get it. They (google) bang on about open source software, but they don’t provide better / some access to their developments - it really does feel like a one way street. At least with Microsoft you know where you stand - you either buy into that or you don’t. Google is trying to ride two horses here at the same time and hope no one notices (or cares for that matter).
If google were so concerned about provided great knowledge and content on the web that they should set a Knol style operatin up away from the main google machine - i.e. as a separate entity - with a properly defined set of principles/ownership. It would provide for greater transparency and probably allow for greater levels of contribution.
However, i suspect that they don’t actually care about creating great and relevant content - they want to drive their advertising revenues . Whether it be through new outlets (knol) or via even more entries on their search engine results
On tricking the entire world, there’s almost always this foul-you strategy..
if people remember alternet (operated by uunet) in the late 80’s early 90’s
when there was only arpanet plus nsfnet, alternet always advertising
themselves as operating on cost-recovery basis.. and suddenly almost
overnight, they will tell you, we’re going public next month, which they did.
And say, Mozilla. Open source, non-profit, etc etc., and enthusiasts rushing
to raise hundres of thousands from supporters to advertise full page on
was that NYT to “download a better browser”… suddenly, “the Mozilla
foundation” found themselves $60M adsense revenue, and still thought
they could do better (and they will do better)… who’s been tricking? and
who are tricked? and who supported the tricks?… Do you feel tricked?
Re PageRank (patent assigned to Stanford).. while no source code, the
(patented) methodologies are publicly made available (per patenting)..
but it’s not really the source code itself, but their infrastructure (and
the founders perseverence in their beliefs) that made google what they
are today.. (and for this, they deserve their success.) After all, they did
publish their BigTable methods (albeit not in fine details..) but there’s
open-source implementation of the map-reduce methodology which
arguably could be a basis for all google-wannabe’s to play with
But what really makes them from a $100M company to a $200B company
in shortly a few years, isn’t really about open-source codes copy & paste,
or at least it doesn’t seem so.. if tricking methods are not some secret
sauce, why can’t all those many fine corporations and/or gifted individuals
reproduce the google success story…
>On tricking the entire world, there’s almost always this foul-you strategy..
typo, meant of, fool-you strategy..
YDRIVE - I wasn’t knocking the brilliance of the Google Founders, who saw search as the key to the Web. I’m knocking the fact that in your post you twice mentioned two things that Google is “doing” but then added the caveats (ohhhhh it’s patented…..ohhhhh without the fine details). JQuery is a brilliant Javascript Library. I don’t think there’s a patent. And the details are out there for you to use—heck—it’s a ready made library that is helping us all make better products.
As for your thoughts on Mozilla and alternet—my point exactly. As for Wordpress potentially being bought—my point exactly. As for Moveable Type—which as Arrington said is looking to get bought—they will most certainly benefit from open source. You’ll make their product even better for free until it’s so good they can sell the “open source” project to a company for hundreds of millions of dollars.
But hey—we’ll still be able to submit our patches. I don’t mention movies often, but if you saw “Live Free or Die Hard” you’ll recall what happened to the hackers after they did their job. Metaphorically speaking, the young hackers out there are getting a very similar shaft.
Does anyone else see this scam?
Wiki should get on the phone with Yahoo.
@DC - yes I’m with you. My later and major [caveat'ed] point though was that
google’s success per se did not quite stem from open-source being its core.
I believe we were the only publication prebriefed and had more than just a summary of what was on the blog post: http://searchengineland.com/071213-213400.php. In particular, I noted that Google did NOT rule out the idea that ads could be on these pages from providers other than Google (though I also doubt they’d really go through with that).
Completely disagree that Know and Google Base are kissing cousins. Google Base is for structure, delimited data. And to say it has gone nowhere means you’re mistakenly viewing Base as a consumer-oriented product. It is a publisher tool for dumping data into Google, used by thousands of online merchants not to mention real estate agents and others.
Will the links in the Knol articles have “nofollow” added like wikipedia?
This is why I read you Michael, great analysis.
Thanks.
Enlightening article Michael, but you’re wrong about Google Base. It’s much more than a spammy classified ad program - it powers all the merchant product feeds, including the ones you see at the top of regular search results. This is very important for online merchants such as myself.
Very insightful. The wikipedia/wikia relationship is very interesting. One of your points is that Google may be trying to monetize Wikipedia through Knol and Wikipedia through Wikia (very indirectly wink, wink, nudge, nudge). However, if a massive non-profit site that is pervasive in our lives were suddenly to start “organically” pushing people toward a clearly associated for-profit site, in a manner that appeared to be somewhat less than random, the DoJ might have something to say about it under Antitrust provisions. Google has no such problem being a competitor to Wikipedia. Anyone know the history of non-profit companies with an associated for-profit organization using market power to help capitalize the for-profit entity?
Great entry! You should write this type of general analysis more often.
The lack of any license discussion in the Google Blog post seemed very glaring considering the topic. I think this is a project where we’ll really see some friction in Google: will they offer CC licenses for the authors? The GDFL? Try to bury the whole issue?
A year from now we might be saying that this was when Google lost the respect of the Open Source community.
Sometimes an overwhelming desire to have more can be very risky, it might kill you!
Nhick
http://www.itrush.com
Right now, Google tells me the links will NOT be nofollow, though that could change. Indeed, I expect it will.
1. Google gets greedy
2. Google tries to buy / copy everything on the internet
3. Google loses focus of how it became what it is today
4. Google starts to see its growth slow
5. Shareholders get trigger happy and Google loses a chunk of its valuation
anyone have an idea when Knoll is supposed to be released?
@17 John -
LOL. You think Gmail is poorly designed? You just lost all credibility.
Anyone have any thoughts on the possibility of using KNOL internally by companies for knowledge sharing. It looks like a great way for internal subject mater experts to get their information out on an internet and make it easy for others to find and benefit from?
Re: #38
AHAHA, as soon as I read that he said gmail is no good, I thought the same thing.
38 & 40
This is not for this blog but I am quite happy to argue the poor googlemail gui with anyone, with or without my credibility - and it is not the only poorly designed google product - but that is not for now.
cheers and smiles
I am too timecrunched to read all the comments here, so I may be repeating. I think you have to look at ALL of Google’s actions through the lens of Game Theory. I am not so sure that Google really wants to launch Knol and see it track towards being successful. What I think they are signaling to Wikipedia and others is that they have the option to compete and to do so with enormous competitive advantage. GoogleBase, GoogleCheckout, Knol–In a startup, these are product lines that must generate revenue. For Google, they are really big, un-ignorable asterisks in negotiating and partnering discussions. Remember the classic example of the retailer who advertises that they will match any competitor’s sale price? Success isn’t measured by “matched sale prices.” Success is measured by talking down the competition from engaging in price cutting in the first place. Similarly, the success of Knol is not going to be based on page views and revenues inside Knol but on how such an announcement shapes the competitive environment for Google outside Knol.
Excellent article.
I really do think that Google’s slogan “Don’t be evil” was incomplete. Or at least it was referring to all other players except for Google. I believe that knol will not be a hit.
I bet all my money on Wikipedia and Wikia and Amazon for 2008.
The very concept of having a web site (Wikipedia) that publishes information written by committee–and worse yet, an anonymous committee–is one of the worst ideas I’ve ever seen. As I posted in my entry on the topic (http://thenextdotcomboom.com/?p=11), Google’s got the right idea with Knol. Author real names are listed–there’s the accountability that Wikipedia lacks. And once and for all, the argument that Wikipedia is somehow superior because they don’t make money just doesn’t hold water.
Let’s wait for the new search engine and how it affects others. That will be interesting.
On DC’s ref of “..open source (Wikipedia)..” and Google’s not reciprocating
by open-sourcing its search code…
I think for this discussion we need to disambiguate among the terms of
“open source” vs. “open data” (vs. “open standards”, “open access”, etc.)
Given that, I don’t think Wikipedia success was particularly dependent on
it’s open source software, nor Google’s huge success particularly
resulted from other people’s open source software.. henceforth
I ain’t quit knocking Google’s not open-sourcing their search software..
(despite myself a long-time open-source fan and believer always…)
In fact, I’d tend to think, Wikipedia’s one major success factor has been
from its relatively “free format”… which would not scare away the general
users to contribute.. it’s more like the taxanomy vs. folksnomy (ie., tags)
case in the rise of web2.0 (getting users to participate).. haven’t seen the
site yet, but based on that INSOMNIA screenshot, KNOL articles seem
“too professional”.. compared with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insomnia
But well, if that’s just a smokescreen and expecting people just copy &
/ac.
paste from Wikipedia.. then.. perhaps.. worth a try [for Google]…
@41 - If we took a poll right now, I guarantee you are the only reader who thinks Gmail (or, “Googlemail” for you) is a poorly designed product. If you have a hard time with the GUI then you must be mentally handicapped.
>users to contribute.. it’s more like the taxanomy vs. folksnomy (ie., tags)
users to contribute.. it’s more like the taxonomy vs. folksonomy (ie., tags)
sorry typo..
When talking about Knol, I guess it’s impossible to avoid the “Wikipedia competitor” angle but I think the interesting thing about Knol (and Squidoo and HubPages) is the focus on the author, rather than just the content (like with Wikipedia). I think the author-centric orientation will be an enabler to what I call “knowledge networking”. More of my thoughts can be found at http://abovethenoise.blogspot......ative.html.
47
I find your comment offensive. I did not say I had a hard time with it I said I didnt like it - I think it is badly designed from a GUI perspective - I find Thunderbird well designed for me. I am allowed to think that. There is no need to insult me like that.