Update for 02008 07 23:
Thanks to my omniscient observers, I’ve learned that Google’s Wikipedia-killer service Knol has gone live with a beta version. It actually reminds me more of About.com than it does Wikipedia. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like once you log in with your Google account.
A Google Knol editing screen
The “Verify Name” is the most interesting part, as that’s where, if you wish to, you can voluntarily hand over your personal information or your credit card information which Google will then use to verify your identity. This is how Google explains it when you click the Verify Name button:
You are not required to use Name Verification to use Knol, but if you choose to use it, here is what you need to know. You can verify your name in two ways – phone number or credit card. For either method, we will ask for some personal information (name, address, and phone number or credit card number). We will share this information securely with a database provider, who will tell us if it matches their existing records. The information you provide will be used only for these authentication purposes and to prevent fraud or other misconduct, unless you explicitly grant us permission to use it in another manner. After the verification process is complete, your name will be displayed as verified on Knol.
Google’s Terms of Service and its Content Policy for Knols contain a frank admission that none of the information you’ll find in this service is trustworthy, so, why then are they concerned about verifying your name, especially since the Terms of Service indicate they exercise no editorial control (other than over material that’s forbidden under their Terms of Service and Content Policy)? How will they prevent fraud and other forms of misconduct by all the spam and con artists known to inhabit the Net? Those people are certainly not going to be verifying their names unless they’ve stolen someone’s identity. I think Google’s service goals for Knol are laudable, but I guess when you’re a company as big as Google you have to think about ways to handle and defeat potential liability and ensuing lawsuits.
Original post, 02007 12 15
While one of my pet peeves, along with other observers, with Google is the lack of clustered search results — Google Labs is experimenting with various kinds of search results groupings –, the company is taking another tack with its project to create little “knols” of Web knowledge, that is, giving preference in its search results to known authors who are perceived to be experts on a particular subject and have created on Google’s servers special Web pages such as this mockup on insomnia that very much resemble the About pages such as this one on insomnia. Industry experts have explained this gambit as some kind of attack on Wikipedia.
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