Google is preparing Wikipedia`s competitor

22nd December 2007

Google is preparing a new project Knol, the main idea of which is to encourage people with useful knowledge in some subject, to write their own articles for online encyclopedia. Now the new Google service is passing the first stage of testing and can only be tested specially invited people.
The online encyclopedia Knol is supposed to cover the vast range of subjects: from scientific concepts to medical, geographical and historical information. Notably, Google will not edit, and monitor the content - this is left to the authors of the articles. Everyone will be able to contribute to the encyclopedia.
Knol users also will be able to use a variety of social tools: they can allow other users to comment on their texts, edit them, make additions, post links in the material or ask questions. Anyone will be able to assess the encyclopedia articles and review them. In addition, authors of article can place advertisements on their pages. In this case, Google will share with the author of the text portion of advertising revenue.
Since Knol encyclopedia will be open to all, Google`s representatives allow that initially not all the articles would be of high quality. Bad materials will be deleted by means of the natural selection: the best articles will be shown on the first search results on Google. Thus, the worse the material, the lower rating it will have.
Google is not planning to control the exclusiveness of the Knol`s content and will make it accessible for any other search engines.