Google Knol, which we’ve likened to a monetizable Wikipedia upon launch, has quietly released three international versions today, enabling French, German and Italian speaking experts (or people who like to think they are experts) to contribute so-called ‘units of knowledge’ to the site.
Update: as commenter Francisco points out in comments, it seems there’s also a Spanish version available, but Google doesn’t talk about or link to that particular language edition anywhere. Weird. Any other languages you can find? (Bingo: Korean, Portuguese, and Arabic)
The success of Google Knol has been less than stellar (traffic is stagnating) and the site is often criticized for featuring articles that are simply not complete or downright inaccurate. To be fair, Knol has only been released for about four months, and it obviously takes much more time than that to build a repository of the world’s collective knowledge.
Expanding into other countries could give Google some more momentum and increase the numbers of expert articles significantly over time. Similar services monetizing crowdsourced content like Helium, Squidoo, WikiHow and Associated Content have yet to release international versions, so this could give Google a nice head start.
ah, please. google… launching OpenID capabilities makes this news announce look so so sad.
Unlike Wikipedia, Knol allows contributors to take credit for their content. This is a great incentive to pull user generated content. Combine that with Google brand name. It is clear that Knol will become a leading player though it is doubtful it can take on wikipedia. Wikipedia has first mover advantage and non-profit motive. I think Knol will emerge and remain number two next to Wikipedia.
90% of the stuff combined with the Google brand name never gets anywhere. Google base anyone? Google Talk? Google Chrome… (I hope not I actually like it). Google Knol though is just a massive fail, and to be honest I can not believe they even made it. I guess they were still dirty on the fact they didn’t come up with wikipedia first.
nice article
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Wikipedia was first to this idea and they will hold the title until something MAJOR happens to change that. It seems that the websites to do it first and make it the easiest always reign king.
Jesse W.
http://www.subprimeblogger.com
Is it a zero-sum game? I’m not sure yet, knol has some unique content.
Funny how all those people said google would inject knol articles into search results were 100% incorrect.
Erm, not quite true. Nupedia was the predecessor to Wikipedia, and it utterly failed. But yes, Wikipedia does have a major advantage in having started so much earlier than Knol.
wikipedia ftw
knol is an epic failure! It’s a total shame and Google ought to close it.
agree. wikipedia rocks ftw.
This has to be a very touchy part of Google’s business, too so I’m sure that they’re not wanting to push it to hard yet. Controlling both the search and the content that gets monetized via their search puts them in an interesting position. But, like you said – 4 months isn’t very long, even for Google. I probably wouldn’t count them out yet.
Also, please don’t forget about us – http://HubPages.com in this category, we just broke through the Quantcast top 250 and we are also helping people monetize their topical content. If you’d like to know more about us, feel free to shoot me an email.
Just wait till Google start burying your pages. See how high your Quantcast ranking will be then.
Knol is best place for share knowledge on Google.Many other languages are required there.But thanks for Google for launching this version in French,Itilian & German.
http://www.iboozi.com
Anndddd Spanish too!!!
Knol launched its Korean version recently too.
Wikipedia is a disgrace, and knol is a pathetic attempt at copying a useless site.
They also have Portuguese and Arabic versions. Your comment about wikiHow isn’t true as they have the same number of language versions as Knol (Dutch instead of Korean is the only difference).
‘The success of Google Knol has been less than stellar’
besides we are used to wiki
Knol differs in a key way from the popular wikipedia, and as a result, both could prosper, offering different bits of knowledge for different purposes, and different audiences. In fact, by adding more experts to the Web, Knol, if it takes off, will probably improve Wikipedia, not kill it off.