Google's Wikipedia

Prepare for Google Knol
Official Google Blog: Encouraging people to contribute knowledge



Google Inc. Thursday announced plans to launch a tool it said will allow users to contribute articles for a new online encyclopedia of sorts. Unlike Wikipedia, Google's new Knol (which stands for a unit of knowledge) will include the names of authors, who will maintain sole responsibility for editing the content.

The Knol encyclopedia is currently in an invitation-only testing phase, Google said. The goal of the project, it added, is to offer information on a wide range scientific, medical, geographical, historical, entertainment and other topics. Google will not edit Knol in any way or bless any of the content, Manber added.

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More of an about.com replacement. Wiki kind of a layout. I can see why they started it. Adsense will tie in well with this, more importantly it will protect the search engine spam rankings we are seeing for obscure terms. Cutts made a recent post about how seriously google is looking at these issues. I guess thats an internal knowledge base answers some of the concerns. Frankly though it looks like another google answers like stupidity.

Wiki is pretty good, google will have to work hard to make this one a success.

well i think it ll take so long time....

as it needs for an invitation ...........
if it allows all google member........then it ll be the best encyclopedia.

This will be just like about.com. I doubt it'll overtake wiki. Wikipedia sucks in many regards but what it does have is all the info collected at a single page. In google's system I'd have to go through 15 different pages by 15 different authors, all of which would have a lot of common (read and therefore redundant) information.
I don't like that idea much.
Plus, if they start introducing context sensitive ads in there it will completely screw it all up (ads for laxatives in an article on the digestive system!!!)