elearnspace

A few days ago, I posted on how up to 30% of Google and Yahoo search results link to an article in Wikipedia. Google started its life by being a pointer – pointing to and filtering an overwhelming information base. The “pointing to” was valuable for searchers because it helped to eliminate much of the junk. But, with the rise of Wikipedia, Google serves little value to its users by simply linking to the site (though as one reader commented, it’s not only the first link, but the many different search results that are of value). Why not just go directly to Wikipedia and skip Google? Well, it appears Google realizes its vulnerability. It has launched a new project called knol: “Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling “knol”, which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it.”
Tech Crunch thinks Google has gone too far: “Google is moving away from simply indexing the worlds content to being a content provider itself…Knol on the other hand brings the power of Google into a marketplace that is already rich with competition, and a marketplace where Google can use its might to crush that competition by favoring pages from Knol over others, on what is the worlds most popular search engine.”