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Difference between Knol and Wikipedia - Google Knol Facts

By: Jessica - Article Submitted on: 2008-07-25

There is no doubt that Google's Knol is a great project and will become one of the most used website in the comming future. But it has been primarily focussed to get maximum traffic on Google's own site rather than other places. Knol will most likely bring huge profits on Google's doorsteps. Knol's articles will most likely compete with Wikipedia's pages who actually started this basic concept. All we hope is that Google keeps it fair and will not give any special boost to Knol in it's search results and keep up the un-bias reputation it has built so far. Even if it did, we cannot question its move since Google is a corporate organization and has full rights to do what is good for it both strategically and financially.

Now let's compare Wikipedia v/s The Search Engine Giant Google

1. Wikipedia is free and relies largely on donations - Knol displays advertisements that generate revenue for Google and the authors of Knol:
Wikimedia Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt charitable corporation. The Wikipedia encyclopedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and is primarily donation based. Whereas the basic purpose of Knol is profit from advertisements displayed on its pages even though it provides a similar encyclopedia concept like Wikipedia. It is up to the Knol authors to decide whether they want advertisements on their articles or not. Knol is somewhat a combination of Wikipedia, Squidoo, Helium and more.

2. Knol lets several authors create multiple pages of the same topic:
So let's say one wants to write about "California Economy", then there can be a large number of articles (say 20 different articles) on "California Economy" itself by different authors, while in Wikipedia there is just one page on each topic and anyone can edit that. This has both advantages and disadvantages, continuing with the above example, in Wikipedia the user will not have to go through 20 different articles about "California Economy", there is one single stop for all the information. Google Knol on the other hand may claim that having multiple articles gives an opportunity to authors to express their own opinion about a topic and not everyone agrees to one version approach (like Wikipedia). Google believes that best Knols articles will naturally rise to the top.

3. User Comments:
Knol allows people to leave comments while Wikipedia does not permit that so far.

4. User Suggestions:
One of the draw backs in Knols concept of multiple articles will be that if someone wants give suggestions on a particular topic then its going to be difficult to choose which article to give suggestion on. For example, if 20 different cancer experts have 20 different articles based on their knowledge and an internet user wants to add to that, then its going to be difficult for the user to give its suggestion to all 20 articles.

5. Content refresh rate:
Articles of Wikipedia are constantly updated because the internet users keep adding and editing its content. In Knol if a author loses interest in modifying his article (or passes away) then what will happen to his article on Knol is something I do not know. What if that author was very popular and had some unique content in his articles, will other Knol authors simply copy that content into their articles ?

6. Spamming:
Google knows it very well that a significant chunk of articles on Knol will be subjected to bogus articles mostly from people who want to promote their business and get backlinks. In Wikipedia, most spams/advertisements are quickly reversed by other users.

7. Ownership of an article:
In Wikipedia no individual owns an article, in Knol the author who started it owns that article. Authors in Wikipedia may feel that their actions carry no special weight, whereas in knol the authors will be able to have their own personal space and even get compensation for it.

8. Technology Future and Enhancements:
This is my personal guess, since Knol will generate big revenues for Google, they will be able to devote a much larger staff to make technology advancements faster and introduce new features than Wikipedia which is a non-profit organization. Google will be able to provide many of it's own applications like Maps, Office tools etc.. which Wikipedia might not.

9. License / copying content:
Wikipedia uses GNU Free documentation License. Google Knol uses Creative Commons License, therefore rights to copy content or modify an article can vary depending on the author's choice. By default all knol articles are licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-3.0 license which allows anyone to reuse the material as long as the original author is named but Knol authors can change this default option at their will.

10. Rating of the pages:
Wikipedia does not have a rating concept. Since Knol can have different versions of articles on the same topic, it is important to know which page is better rated. I have a feeling that since higher rated articles will be placed higher in Google's search index, which means more traffic and money for the author. We may see frauds like vote for my Knol and I will vote for yours kind of cheating in future. At some point new Knol articles will find it difficult to compete with older articles on the same topic because the older article will have a better rating and larger content. It may lead to some kind of dominance by older Knol articles.

11. Author Verification:
Most articles in Wikipedia do not require you to be signed in, modifications can be made on the based of your IP address too. Knol requires users (especially authors) to create Google accounts and authors can be verified if needed using the address or phone on the file. This is a very good feature and people may at some point be accounted for what they present.

It is widely believed that many Knol authors will use modified Wikipedia content to build their articles, thus making Wikipedia a net loser. Other sites like About.com, wikihow, Helium, Squidoo, Hubpages and many others will also suffer. Google's own bloggers will likely feel the impact and many of them may actually hop to Knol. Knol may actually become absolute dominant player in the Internet world like Microsoft is in desktop world.

We live in a competitive world where survival of the fittest is now accepted by everyone in the technology world. Knol will certainly be a dominant player on the internet for the years to come.

Knol has just been launched, and we do not completely know inside-outs of it. Therefore some of the content in this article may not be accurate. I will try to update this article with much more information at a later time.

References and Additional reads:

The Day After: Looking At How Well Knol Pages Rank On Google
- http://searchengineland.com/080724-140223.php

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol

Jessica

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