[Foundation-l] Knol, a year later

[Robert Rohde]

Some weeks ago I had an opportunity to talk with a Google employee
about a number of topics.  One of the things we discussed was Knol.

Setting aside the way it may have been marketed in the popular press
at the time, she suggested that Google does not currently see Knol as
a collaborative medium in the way Wikipedia is.  Rather, they
currently regard Knol as more of a web publishing platform.  In other
words, it is a place for individuals and small groups to post their
work online with a certain degree of infrastructure and visibility
(and Google ads, of course).

Whether Knol has distinguished itself from other ways of publishing
online, I don't know, though I haven't seen much evidence of that.
However, she also made the more interesting point that most of
Google's current development efforts with Knol are focused towards
foreign languages and scripts.  By providing a high level of UTF-8
support, they seem to be hoping that they can capture a significant
portion of the non-English web publishing community, which is of
course a rapidly growing segment that isn't always well supported by
some current offerings.

Rather than being the next Wikipedia, maybe a better analogy would be
to think of Knol as the next Geocities.

-Robert Rohde