Wikipedia Rival : Knol by Google

Google opened a new service to the public recently called Knol . The company announced it last December. Knols are articles about specific topics, written by people who have knowlodge about those subjects.

The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol article will have an author or group of authors who will sign the article with their name. With "moderated collaboration", Google introduced a new method for authors to work together.

Google also made an agreement with the New Yorker magazine which allows any Knol author to add one cartoon per knol from the New Yorker's cartoon collection.


"Knol has been described both as a rival to encyclopedia sites such as Wikipedia and Scholarpedia and as a complement to Wikipedia, offering a different format that addresses many of Wikipedia's shortcomings. The non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which owns the name Wikipedia and the servers hosting the Wikipedia projects, welcomed the Google Knol initiative saying that "The more good free content, the better for the world."

While Wikipedia articles are written collectively under a "neutral point of view" policy,Knol will highlight personal expertise by emphasizing authorship and, like articles provided on Squidoo, HubPages, oondi.com, and Helium.com, knols will contain the personal opinions of the author." (Wikipedia.com)

Knol can be found at knol.google.com.