Google Knols: If You Build It, Odds Are, So Will They

When I saw the news items start floating about Google Knols, I wasn't the least bit surprised. Do any Google Search for a subject and odds are, Wikipedia is in the top five results at least 75% of the time. Wikipedia has been one of the biggest things online that Google hasn't touched, so you had to know it was only a matter of time.

For once, however, I think that Google's invasion of yet another area of the Internet can only bring change for the better. While many in the Web 2.0 community are railing against the injustice of big Goliath Google going after little David Wikipedia, the facts are that not much has been done to change Wikipedia after this past February's outing of a Wikipedia editor's credentials as faked.

While there was a hue and cry at the time clamoring for more checks and safeguards, other than a few changes, Wikipedia has still gone about its business as they were. With no real competition looming for them, why bother changing? After all, they were ranking in visitors from Google Search as they were.

And therein lies the rub. You'd have to assume that the Powers That Be at Google would notice that the same site shows up in the top search results for so many searches, and high-ranking search results mean eyeballs. The question would only be how to replicate that type of success with page rank while luring contributors from the already established site.

And here's where Knols looks smarter than Wikipedia. While Wikipedia exists as a non-profit organization, Google is the behemoth of advertising dollars. Promise that topics will be generated by a single, verified author rather than the “edit by committee” process that has seen vandalism as well as false information added for laughs (Colbert Nation, anyone?), and then offer them AdSense commissions for the ads that are running on the pages and you've hit egoboo and money as motivators. More than one author can write on a topic, but screenshots indicate a voting system that will allow users to float the most relevant information to the top.

And while there are those who think that Google is dipping its toe into a pond it doesn't belong in, and others who think that Wikipedia doesn't have a thing to fear, from this author's perspective, Wikipedia may just end up a footnote in the user-created encyclopedia history book. Which you'll read on Knols.