The obvious answer is Wikipedia. Squidoo is too spammy and Mahalo is inconsequential in the long run. Without seeing it, I reserve judgement, but as you say, Know could break a lot of stuff

Wikipedia is Google's biggest black hole: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/01/is_wikipedia_a.php, so I would wager Knol is out to monetize the outbound traffic that now goes to Wikipedia. Google has had at best mixed success with doing anything relating to user-generated content (Google Base anyone?) or other 'social stuff' (Google Image Labeler), so I am not holding my breath for Knol. What's more, Wikipedia has attained the same sort of stature for semi-authoritative knowledge that keeps people searching with Google even though Yahoo and Microsoft are just as good.

How are they going to split up the ad revenues among multiple authors of a knol? By the word? Given that the population Google does revenue-share with currently already contains many Made-for-Adsense spammers, black hat SEOs and other dubious characters, this is not going to be easy.

Mahalo is inconsequential? Strange we already have a page on knol but I dont see one on Wiki or Squidoo. ;)

http://www.mahalo.com/Google_Knol

In any case I'm curious to see how things work with no editors. Does bring up some interesting questions regarding adsense rev. sharing.

Sean, I must admit that I have a huge bias against Mahalo. Perhaps the day a search for "protein structure prediction" yields something other than "high protein foods" as it's first hit I will reconsider, but you can never, ever find enough people to scale to meet the needs of the world.

That said, the revenue share can be a stroke of brilliance, or a complete disaster.

Sean, I agree with Deepak on this. I have already offered my take on why Mahalo cannot beat Google (http://www.krishworld.com/blog/tech-stuff/can-mahalo-beat-google/). I am sure Deepak agrees with some of my arguments in the post. Mahalo is definitely inconsequential but I also feel Knol will not kill Wikipedia (my thoughts on this topic is in my blog). But, as Deepak says, it is too early to call.

Yes, it is Wikipedia by Google. But it has better features for author to monetize written page, related search box and Peer review widget.

I think it is great to have a better version of wikipedia and I am sure Google will do greater job in this area.

I would certainly not advocate the monopoly, but you got to be smarter and quicker to kill the beast, other they stories will repeat itself.

There is no way that a revenue share will have any impact on Wikipedia contributors. They won't desert because the money will beinsignificant. One thing the webs have taught us is that it's about a whole lot more than money. Google can't just step in and break this - they have a really bad track record against established incmbents anyway.

Google is advertising and search, just a pointer to the knowledge. Wikipedia is the "knowledge", relatively speaking. Google won't ever break out of it's revenue model, ever. They will beome the Microsoft of their age, able to maintain their search/advertizing monopoly, but won't be able to innovate, only buy.

Also, just think about it from a "coolness" perspective: Google Knol? How do you pronounce that? Lame! Wikipedia? Oh yes the encyclopedia of the web, well, of everything. Sweet!

Last week I saw a report on CNN where their tech correspondent was talking about how Google had failed at IM and had to team up with AIM. The correspondent began the report saying "everything Google touches turns to gold."

Hardly. Web search is a huge success. I'd consider Maps and Mail big successes. After that...

And the success of Maps is interesting. As much as I love the product, Mapquest is still the traffic leader despite having a vastly inferior product.

See: http://blog.agrawals.org/2007/10/14/a-new-mapquest-beta-with-not-much-new/

What drivel. No for-profit company can possibly "compete" with Wikipedia for the very reason that you have implicitly stated. The authors ask "what is in it for me?" They don't ask that when editing Wikipedia. And the readers don't ask "who is trying to sell me what" when they read it either, which they will ask when they read Knol.

But more important from the point of view of the end user, Wikipedia pages are studiously reviewed to remove any possible bias towards any commercial entity. While Knol pages will no doubt often be created with intent to promote the paying advertiser, or be steered that way over time.

The very idea of accredited pages with "owners" is contrary to the entire wiki model and will be difficult to maintain in any form. It is, as Vishy suggests, likely to become an absurd game played mostly by the "SEO" types Google tolerates.

Wikipedia's real contribution is not the pages anyway but rather the names of all the pages. It is quite difficult to name a million things in English, disambiguate all the clashes and come up with ways to fit all the names of everything into a fixed character set. Let alone other languages. If Google Knol does anything other than copy all the same names, it's going to be a joke for the reason Deepak suggests: generic concepts will be redefined to sell products.

What's most absurd is the various news reports claiming that "Wikipedia is also competing with Google" because Wikia, a private company that is not related to the Wikimedia Foundation at all, has launched a search engine of its own. This is just bad journalism. Jimmy Wales no longer runs Wikipedia, that's now Florence Devouard's job as Chair of the Foundation. And she's far better at it than Wales ever was. Unless Google hires her they are unlikely to figure this game out quickly.

Really, the hard work at Wikipedia is more like that of eBay: dispute resolution. Devouard was the one who pioneered Wikipedia's ArbCom process and also worked hard to remove its systemic bias by making it very difficult for dominant cliques to exclude their opponents by simple bullying. I can't see Google being as good at this out of the gates and it takes years and years to build up a culture of people who can reliably execute such a process. This probably ends with Google buying up Wikia which is probably Jimmy Wales' exit strategy. If they don't crush him by copying him and hiring the actual brainpower from Wikimedia.

A better comparison is to Idealab's purchase of Wikitravel which many people see as a test case of whether a for-profit can run an open content project at all, even if it keeps the same people.

I think its mostly about positioning - in the mind of the customer.

Google owns Mail & Search (PPC).

The minds have already been made. Wikipedia - has become "knowledge' - as Jefferey said. One way to look at all this: would be,

from Intent ( read search phrase) to Content -> Google does a great job. Now, in case where Content = Knowledge. Knowl(edge) = Wikipedia

Me thinks: The power of a brand, suggests - strong association. IBM means Big + Server.

Can IBM stand for Instant messaging? Well, from a product standpoint they can. But can they from a customer mind-share perspective? Not if we look at their history..

Ajay