Google offers encyclopedia. Net service may rival Wikipedia, reward authors

Google Inc. is working on a new Internet encyclopedia that will consist of material submitted by people who want to be identified as experts and possibly profit from their knowledge.

The concept, outlined late Thursday in a posting on Google’s website, poses a potential challenge to the nonprofit Wikipedia, which has drawn upon the collective wisdom of unpaid, anonymous contributors to emerge as a widely used reference tool.

Google is calling its alternative "knol" – the Mountain View, Calif.,-based company’s shorthand for a "unit of knowledge."

Full Story: http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/12/15/google_offers_encyclopedia/

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Google’s Units of Knowledge May Raise Conflict of Interest

By Betsy Schiffman

Google’s rollout of an encyclopedia-like collection of articles could tighten the company’s control over the user experience on the web.

Knol, an encyclopedia-like collection of articles written by selected experts, might drive revenue growth for Google, but that’s probably not the motive behind it. The real value of the project is how it extends Google’s control over the content that users see online.

"This is Google’s way to grab the ‘third page’ of search," says Josh Bernoff, an analyst at Forrester Research. "The first page is the main page of a portal; the second page is where the search results are; the third page is what you click on when you decide where to go. Google already owns the first and second page, but since they don’t own content, they have no control over the third page. In fact, a lot of times Yahoo-owned content could show up on the third page."

Full Story: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/12/google_knol