Knol – Google’s Version of an Article Directory
Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) launched last July 23 a new service called Google Knol. The way I see it, this is just a glorified article directory where anybody can write an article and post it as a knol.
There are many opinions about Google Knol and its purpose. Some people say it is meant to be a direct competition of Wikipedia. Some say it will look more like about.com where the articles are based on the author’s expertise.
What’s nice about Google Knol is that authors can paste their adsense codes and monetize their knol. As mentioned in their Terms of Service
Knol provides Owners the option of allowing Google-placed advertisements to appear alongside their knols through AdSense for Content, Google’s content-targeted advertising program
Just like wikipedia, all content in google knol is protected by the Creative Commons CC-BY-3.0 license. This states that the articles in google knol can be copied, distributed, and adapted as long as proper attribution is done.
that’s very nice
have you heard or read of Wikia search? If Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia where anyone can edit an article, Wikia Search is the search engine where anyone can edit search results.
Try it: http://re.search.wikia.com/
Knoll seems to be bacically an article directory, but with some differences. Articles are appoved without prior moderation. You can invite other persons to moderate and update your articles. Other persons can add comments. Another differnce is that the articles are not placed into cathegories, but are instead instantly indexed by coogle for search. As by other article directories, you are allowed to link to your own web-sites, but you are not allowed to make articles that can be interpreted as mainly a commercial for some products.