Google launches Knol, the Wikipedia for cash

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Google had announced its own Wikipedia project in last December. The product was under beta testing for last seven months. Google announced that anyone with a Google account such as Gmail can submit articles from July 23, 2008.

The main difference between Knol and Wikipedia is that Wikipedia entries can be created and edited by anyone with only an IP address whereas Knols (articles) will have authors with actual names who will be answerable for their content. The other difference of course is that the ad revenue from each knol will be shared with the authors.

flickr.com Google Knol- article submission page image:41947:3::0

Udi Manber, VP Engineering wrote in the official Google blog

A knol is just a web page; we use the word "knol" as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we'll do the rest.

But experts fear that monetization may backfire on Google. There will be thousands of articles on the popular subjects to gain ad revenue and other subjects may be ignored. Wikipedia is a charitable organization with no ads on it's articles. Another interesting thing is that how Google will treat Wikipedia in it's search results once knol becomes popular. Although Wikipedia is very much popular by itself, A large number visits come from Google searches.When somebody searches on any title a Wikipedia entry comes top in the search result. But once knol becomes popular Google may bring knol at the top of it's searches as it brings cash to Google.