Google has been noticing the power of Wikipedia during the recent years. The announcement of Knol is not a big surprise. Knol would be a Wikipedia killer. Google has been understanding the profit it can make out of a Wikipedia-like product and also Wikipedia’s loop holes.
Knol, which Google claims to be its own idea, is actually an enhanced version of Wikipedia. Knol means a unit of knowledge. Google plans to include a large number of user-written articles on a wide range of topics. However, when it was released as a beta to the public, it had few articles written mostly in the medical and health sector.
Unlike Wikipedia, Google requires all Knol projects to be posted only after signing into the account. Also, Google would check the authenticity by using an account owner’s credit card information or their phone number.
Search engine experts feel that Knol has been given too much favouritism by Google helping their new pages to come to the top of search results. Even if the content is copied from another website and posted in Knol, you would get top results in Google. Isn’t this cool? This is a huge mistake Google has done to its image. Google followers would no longer feel its results are unbiased.