Google (News - Alert) recently announced that it was testing an upcoming online publishing platform named — “Knol.” The term Knol stands for a unit of knowledge and the service intends to enable authors who are experts in a particular field to share articles.

 

While there are some popular online knowledge repositories like Wikipedia and Mahalo, Google believes that currently online publishing did not highlight author’s names and its current offering would fill that void. Over the years, online publishing evolved without the author’s names being highlighted. By highlighting the author’s name, Google claims that the articles would have more credibility and help serve the online user better. The online service does not restrict one article to each subject. There can be more than one author submitting multiple articles on the same subject.

 

“Somehow the Web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors’ names highlighted,” Udi Manber, vice president for engineering at Google, wrote in an announcement of the test Thursday evening on a Google corporate blog. “We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of Web content.”

 

Popular online knowledge repositories like Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, Squidoo, Mahalo and About.com have an exhaustive list of articles. While Wikipedia is not-for-profit service and anyone is free to contribute and edit the contents published, Knol would not allow its contents to be modified by anyone except the original author. Feedback on the articles would however be welcome. While Wikipedia is a collective effort by anyone interested in contributing, Knol would have individual and competing articles on the same subject. Another distinctive difference between Wikipedia and Knol would be that Google’s offering comes with a commercial interest. Advertisements would be allowed on the site and the authors would get a share of the revenue generated.

 

Google intends to use the service to cover a range of topics from science to history and would aim at becoming the first stop for users searching for any information.

 

“I think Google is looking at the growth of sites like Wikipedia, that aggregate knowledge, and feels it has to play in that space,” said Danny Sullivan, a search expert and editor of the Web site Search Engine Land. “At some point, Google crosses the line, where they are not only a search engine, but also a content provider,” Mr. Sullivan told the New York Times. Technically speaking, he said, authors, not Google, would create Knol pages. “But it matters how it appears,” he said. “I do a search on Google, I go to some place that Google hosts and I also find Google ads.”

 

While Google’s latest offering is seen as direct competition for Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia dismissed any such threats. He observed that their services would be different. While Google’ s service would encourage competition from authors, Wikipedia aims at offering a single collective contribution from various authors on the subject. “I’m looking forward to seeing what it ends up looking like,” Mr. Wales said.

 

While Google is currently testing this publishing platform, there has been no official announcement about when it would be released.

 

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