As the sprawling Google empire looks for new markets to conquer, a new target has caught its eye, and that target is Wikipedia.

Apparently the edict from on high (ie Larry, Sergey and Eric) was that Google needed to find a way to “help people share their knowledge”. Of course “do no evil” Google could have simply have pointed people to www.wikipedia.org, but instead it’s decided to use its seemingly infinite resources to launch its own knowledge sharing tool, which it’s calling “knol”.

Google has announced that it is testing “knol”, and that it hopes that knol will encourage experts with knowledge about a particular subject to write authoritative articles and publish them as web pages. A “knol”, apparently, stands for a “unit of knowledge”.

“There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it,” said Udi Manber, VP Engineering.

“We believe that many do not share that knowledge today simply because it is not easy enough to do that.”

At this stage the tool is by invitation only, as it is in the initial phases of being tested.

Manber explained that while Google will be providing the tools for authors to write these articles, it won’t take on the role of editor.

“At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word “knol” as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably,” he said.

“It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we’ll do the rest.

“Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors.”

Google will also provide community tools, so that others will be able to submit comments, questions, edits, and additional content. Once the service goes live, everyone will be able to participate.

Now, of course Google hasn’t explicitly stated that it is taking on Wikipedia, but it’s pretty clear that it’s trying to develop a service with an uncanny similarity to Wikipedia.

Wags have already labeled it Googlepedia.

Google must have its reasons for trying to take on Wikipedia.

Perhaps it thinks it can do a better job than the not-for-profit Wikipedia, or perhaps it simply sees an opportunity for itself in the burgeoning  “knowledge sharing” market.

Rightly or wrongly, Wikipedia has become the de facto online encyclopedia of choice, and while having an alternative reference source can only be a good thing, I hope it isn’t at the expense of Wikipedia.

I suspect that a lot of people will be watching this latest Google initiative very carefully, and wondering whether Google has its many fingers in one too many pies.

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Entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 11:40 pm under Google.

Read more entries by John Pospisil.
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