Google launches 'Knol' – to Compete with 'Wikipedia'

[Karl]

From: Breaking News – July 24, 2008

Search engine giant Google launched Knol yesterday, an online community-built encyclopedia to compete with and arguably improve on the the wiki idea of a pedia. The announcement was made through a Google blog and reads as follows...

Article Link: Breaking News - Google launches Knol, Wikipedia should be worried

[Karl]

Earlier this week, Google's project Knol - regarded as an attempt to compete with Wikipedia - went live.

From: Straight Up Search – Posted by mike k on July 25, 2008

There seems to be a complete lack of browsable content categories at this point in time. The main page of the site offers a random assortment of knols under the heading "Plain old bag o' knols". Google might be trying to hide the fact that there isn't much content available at this time since, despite there being a working search box at the top of the page, they say, "Who needs a search engine? CTRL+F" under the "Plain old bag" heading. I find this hilarious coming from the largest search engine company in the world.

Buried at the bottom of the page in a tiny font you'll find a "browse" link that will take you to an unsorted list of fifty knols. At the time of this writing there were seven pages worth of knols available. 350 articles is a far cry from Wikipedia's nearly 2.5 million but then again it is only the third day.

Read Full Article: Google's Project Knol - An Update : StraightUpSearch

Other news:
> Google Walks Away From Digg Deal
> Google "Knows" About 1 Trillion Web Items

[FabianPattberg]

Thanks for this Karl.

I like the idea of Knol. The name is just horrible!

Fabian

[Karl]

Some further information about “Knol”: Google's Knol Launches: Like Wikipedia, With Moderation

Originally Posted by FabianPattberg

I like the idea of Knol. The name is just horrible!

It does seem like a strange choice of name, but Knol is intended to mean a “unit of knowledge” (I suppose, much in the same way that in the physical sciences, a “mol” is a unit of matter). Even the name “Google” seems like a strange name, but people eventually became accustomed to it – to the point that it is often seen as synonymous with “search”. It reminds me of “knoll” – which generally means a small grassy hill; so it’s not so bad, but somehow does not seem very ambitious title for a project of this nature. But regardless of the attractive features of this new project, so far it looks like they will take a while before this they can be seen as serious competition for Wikipedia…

On the topic of strange name choices, there is the newly launched search engine Cuil which was being marketed as a potential “Google Killer”. But the initial feedback to the launch of the Cuil search engine does not seem to be very positive:

> How To Lose Your Cuil 20 Seconds After Launch

> Cuil Crashes And Burns At Launch | WebProNews

> Can Anyone Compete with Google? : StraightUpSearch

> The World According to Cuil

In fact, one blog has described the names of both Knol and Cuil as “crimes against branding”:

> Cuil, Knol, and other crimes against branding | Business Mind Hacks