Google Knol Launched, Open to Everyone – now Discontinued

Google has launched their latest: The Google Knol. “The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It’s their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good.”

The most attractive feature of Knol is the Google adsense integration. At Knol you will get paid through adsense, i.e. the more popular your articles are the more you get paid. Blogs as you all know enable you to get you latest writing to your readers easily. Knol is better comparatively, especially when when you want to write an authoritative article on a single topic. Readers can rate, comment and submit a review on it. You get paid too, it is at your discretion whether you wish to integrate the adsense feature. So does it sound like a better option? 😉

The log in page is: https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?… And the loading spinner is colorful.

What is Google Knol?

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia while Knol is considered a library.

Just as an encyclopedia, Wikipedia provides verifiable article on every topic worthy of inclusion. Knol on the other hand is a collection of various opinions and experiences, some of them contradicting each other too!

You will have multiple Knols on the same subject. Thus Knol will play the role of sharing information and knowledge and we as users may have to make our own study about the sources and authors to decide which to believe and accept.

As they say: Everyone knows something, tell the world what YOU know at knol.google.com

Check out their Google Talk Chatback feature.

Update: In November 2011 Google announced that it would be discontinuing Knol. In May 2012 articles became accessible only to their authors. Such a sad thing that most of Google’s ventures just shut down after few years of use. They are all brilliant apps unfortunately layman just fail to use it to full advantage.