Tech News: Google Launches Knol

Slowly but surely, Google is doing to the web what Microsoft has done to computers worldwide - monopolize it. Google just launched Knol (still in Beta) - Google’s own collection of articles on just about anything. But unlike Wikipedia, Knol isn’t purely user-generated content. Articles or “knols” are written by authorities and experts in the various fields. It spikes up the credibility of the information.

Wikipedia is just so open to haphazard editing and vandalism that no self-respecting researcher would be citing it as a major source. If you’d ask what’s separates it then from encyclopedias like Encarta and Britannica, it’s Knol’s presentation. It has that Web 2.0 forums feel that it somehow makes the whole thing not seem like an encyclopedia and yet the articles are quite-top notch fit to be in an encyclopedia. It scares me to see something overtake Wikipedia as an online information resource and if this goes on, Knol is in a definite advantage to take over.