So I’ve read a lot of complaints, like this one, recently about Google’s launch of Knol. Jason Calcanis from Mahalo wrote a great post about Google becoming a content company that raises some excellent points about the potential affect it could have on startups and “Google-dependent businesses”. My first reaction to reading these posts is – what took you guys so long to see this, and really what’s the big deal?
The following issues are frequently mentioned:
- Google giving Knol’s unfair advantage in search results – I noticed that when Googling for “Knol” Wikipedia’s article came 3rd and Knol itself came 4th. Odd. The only advantage I saw was that the Knol folks bought the top ad slot. I would wager they actually had to budget some cash and compete to get that slot though. Take a look: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=knol&btnG=Search
- Regarding Pagerank specifically- Since when does Google release exactly how they calculate Pagerank? Oh and I don’t remember anyone complaining when Video Results from YouTube started appearing at the top of the page except for perhaps some video startups that no one cares about who are still living off of VC money.
- Regarding Publisher Competition – As far as I know, anyone can create a Knol, and monetize it. In fact, isn’t this just another place where content publishers can create awareness for their content and make money? Oh and Google hosts it for you, provides great tools for collaboration and publishing, and it’s free. Maybe now some non-technical folk will feel comfortable putting what they know on the Web. If all of your traffic and some of your revenue comes from Google (see Google dependent businesses), shouldn’t you either thank Google or engage in marketing alternatives? When it comes down to it, if you’re scared about losing traffic, do something about it.
- Google “becoming” a content company – Google is and always has been a publisher. Remember the lawsuits about Google publishing copyrighted material in search results? Now consider that Google runs YouTube, Blogger, Picassa, Maps, Orkut, Earth, DoubleClick, Adwords, Books, etc. Google has been a content publisher since day 1, but Google is not a content creator. Someone still needs to create the content in the first place. This gets into a whole other rant about why a whole lotta folk have to rethink their distribution methods. Basically, they should have been working on this since the invention of the Web, and if they haven’t they should go out of business.
- What about Wikipedia - I love Wikipedia. It contains the sum total of human knowledge and mis-knowledge to date. Of course there are some problems. Many domain experts don’t feel comfortable with it because anyone can edit, it hosts a ton of content that no one can make money on, they don’t like it when multiple articles address the same topic, and educators don’t trust it as a source. Knol seems to address those problems. We’ll see how it plays out. I think it’s a good idea to have some competition.
Some thoughts after trying to use Knol. It almost crashes my browser on every page load. I have no idea what they’re trying to load into the page, but it’s a bitch to browse. I never get search results for anything I’m interested in. It’s slow. It’s going to take a long time for it to catch up in content. I still haven’t seen a search result for a Knol on the first page of Google results other than when I searched explicitly for “Knol”.
\Yes, this is my second post in two days talking about Google. Yes, I am a fan. Yes, I don’t care how big the bandwagon is or even if they become an evil empire. Google is far and away the most useful company on the Web today.
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