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Google to tackle Wikipedia with new knowledge service Rhys Blakely Google is to go head-to-head with Wikipedia, the web’s largest reference work, in a clash of two of the internet’s most powerful brands. A new Google service, dubbed knol, will invite “people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it”, Udi Manber, a Google engineer, said. Like Wikipedia, articles in knol (the name derives from “knowledge”) will be free to read online. In a departure from the nonprofit Wikipedia model, however, knol’s authors will be able to attach advertising to their work and take a share of revenues.
(Article continues below) “The goal is for knols [individual articles] to cover all topics, from scientific concepts to entertainment,” Mr Manber said. The project is the latest to distance Google from its roots in internet search and pitch it against well-established rivals in a new sector. The company recently squared up to the mobile phone industry by unveiling its own operating system for hand-held devices. It is also set to bid for a portion of America’s airwaves that it could use to build a wireless broadband network. The creation of knol, at present in an invitation-only test phase but likely to be open to the public within months, will set two of the web’s titans against each other. In October, Wikipedia, which relies on donations for funds, was visited by 107 million people, or a third of the “active global internet population”, according to Nielsen Online, the analyst. That made it the eighth most-visited online destination.
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