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Or so, at least, Google would like you to conclude. Significant differences include single-author control (but the freedom for other authors to set up competing pages as well), bylines for page authors, reader ranking, and - oh yes - Google ads (authors interested in allowing ad placements would get a “substantial” share of the resulting revenues).

Here’s how Google introduces the concept on a somewhat higher level:

The web contains an enormous amount of information, and Google has helped to make that information more easily accessible by providing pretty good search facilities. But not everything is written nor is everything well organized to make it easily discoverable. There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it. We believe that many do not share that knowledge today simply because it is not easy enough to do that. The challenge posed to us by Larry, Sergey and Eric was to find a way to help people share their knowledge. This is our main goal.

The question, of course, is how well the Knol project will compete with the Wikipedia, both for author input as well as readers.

And, of course, in quality. The Google announcement of the Knol project is pasted in below in full, but I’ll also provide my review and reactions to the concept, not only on the knol’s prospects for fulfilling Google’s goals, but also its potential for providing a well supported, highly visible, testbed for individuals to experiment with a wide variety of models for the collaborative creation of Web based content - something the Wikipedia does not offer.

Naturally, its the usual Google Beta, but in this case, the experiment is not yet public. And according to an article published in the New York Times this morning, it may never be made public if early results are not encouraging. During the first phase, page authors will be admitted by invitation only - a smart move, as it will not only get the project off to a high quality start, but will also appeal to the egos of later authors that want to join the club.

That said, the sample knol included in the announcement struck me as being rather intimidating for potential authors - and perhaps deliberately so, to discourage people setting up anything less than a print encyclopedia style and quality entry. Whether Google has aimed too high in doing so will remain to be seen, although Google’s announcement says that there will not be any editorial control exercised by Google over individual topic entries, and, as a result, “we cannot expect that all of them will be of high quality.”

Google describes the roll out as follows:

Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling “knol”, which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.

The announcement also makes it sound as if the interface will be quite simple, perhaps to lure domain experts into the Knol that are not necessarily as comfortable with computers as the usual Wikipedia contributor might be.

The less rigid approach adopted by Google for the project is what I find to be most intriguing. In effect, the knol platform strikes me as being a bit like Sourceforge, since the tools provided will allow different, variously open cultures to evolve under specific topics, with some authors insisting on maintaining total control of their topic, and others acting as project managers, guiding the process in a manner more like an open source project. Here’s how freedom is described: [read more here]

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• Andy Updegrove

  

  Andy Updegrove is a partner and founder of Gesmer Updegrove LLP, a Boston-based technology law firm, and has represented and helped structure more than 80 worldwide standard setting, open source, promotional and advocacy consortia over the past 20 years. He has also represented hundreds of both emerging as well as established technology companies, and is the founder and editor of both the popular website http://www.consortiuminfo.org and the widely-read Standards Blog

• Karen Copenhaver

  

  Karen Copenhaver is a partner in Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP ‘s Business & Technology practice focusing on technology transfer and licensing of intellectual property with a specific emphasis on open source business models. Most recently, Copenhaver was executive vice president and general counsel at Black Duck Software, Inc.