Google unveils Googlepedia!
p2pnet news | Advertising:- “The challenge posed to us by Larry, Sergey and Eric was to find a way to help people share their knowledge.”
Larry, Sergey and Eric are, of course, L. Page, S. Brin and E. Schmidt, the billionaires who want to be zillionaires, and who run Google.
And their latest idea to help make this happen is the “knol”, short for a unit of knowledge.
Yes.
“Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it,” continues Udi Manber, VP engineering on the the Google blog.
That looks familiar. Like, isn’t that what Wikipedia does? So will this be called the Googlepedia?
Manber goes on:
“The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.
“The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors.”
And by way of example, Udi Manber has a page on insomnia written by Rachel Manber (right) who’s the director of behavioural sleep medicine at Stanford University.
What a coincidence 
!
Anyway, Manber (Udi) goes on:
We do not want to build a walled garden of content; we want to disseminate it as widely as possible. Google will not ask for any exclusivity on any of this content and will make that content available to any other search engine.
He says of the example, “As always, a picture is worth a thousands words … The main content is real, and we encourage you to read it (you may sleep better afterwards!), but most of the meta-data – like reviews, ratings, and comments – are not real, because, of course, this has not been in the public eye as yet. Again, this is a preliminary version.”
“Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content,” promises the post.
“All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.”
But Google never does anything unless there’s a profit in it attached somewhere ………
Meanwhile, “Google will play a role in deciding which individual entries … appear at the head of the results on the Google search engine, which is likely to be the most important access route to the new site,” says Times Online.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
Google blog – Encouraging people to contribute knowledge, December 13, 2007
Times Online – Google unveils rival to Wikipedia, December 14, 2007
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December 14th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
i don’t use the crappy wikipedia, so why would i want to use googlepedia?
when i want info, i go to reputable sources.
and what has happened to their promise to digitize every book in the world and make them available online for free? hmm?
December 14th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
Wikipedia is an astounding resource: comprehensive, easy, and free of commercial taint. If you @catflap are at odds with it, I’m afraid that says more about you than it does about wikipedia. And if you prefer authorised sources, hey, even they are listed at the bottom of wikipedia pages. Despite its obvious theoretical susceptibility to digital graffiti, in practice it is the second most useful resource on the net, next to your favourite search engine.
December 16th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
At least the makers of Knol will not begging for finance like wikipedia. Also the name knol is similar to the grassy knolls of the final kennedy incident. Unique coincidence or is there something implied to this?
December 17th, 2007 at 11:26 am
catflap doesn’t want it. oh well it seemed like a good idea but i guess it’s dead now.