Bad news for Google and their new information portal Knol. Far from being the next step in the takeover of the digital world for the search engine giant, Knol could be going the way of flop search engine Cuil as a lesson in how not to launch a product.
While Knol is still in Beta stages at the moment, it’s clear that there are problems with the system already. Admittedly, the idea behind Knol was a good one – offer a viable alternative to Wikipedia and actually paying experts writing the Knol stuff via Google’s own ad-revenue-share program. Unfortunately, good ideas don’t always translate into successful realities.
Where Knol differs from Wikiepedia is that as opposed to simply having a membership and editing information you see is wrong, Knol requires you to contact the author of the piece and ask permission to edit it. Cue in-denial wannabe experts whose work can’t possibly be wrong…
Additionally, there have been many complaints that Knol is nothing more than a glorified self-promotion tool for the digital egomaniacs online today (of which there are many).
So, is Knol about to fail before it’s even out of Beta? While it’s true that it’s still early days (and at least they’re not making the same claims as Cuil did that ultimately backfired on them), Google will need to look at the early feedback and make adjustments if it wants Knol to be taken seriously.
The good news is that Google is normally one of the best companies for listening to it’s users, so maybe Knol isn’t quite beyond saving yet.
Filed under: Tech Time | Tagged: cuil, google knol, google tools, knol, online information websites, wikipedia
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