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Back in December of last year, Google posted a brief announcement of a new experiment in online publishing. At first blush it seemed to represent a challenge to the Wikipedia - but with a few differences. Google summarized the concept 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.

Then the project dropped out of sight, while the chosen authors contributed initial content, and while Google decided whether to green light the project for ongoing support and public participation

This Wednesday, Google lifted the password curtain on its infant knol site, and issued a new announcement. In some respects, the description of the knol game plan (and even the words) are identical to what we read in the original blog entry. In others, they are different, apparently reflecting lessons learned and author feedback received during the intervening seven months. And, of course, there is now the nascent site itself to browse and watch evolve as well.

What you’ll see when you visit turns out to be quite different from the Wikipedia - at least for now. Given that until yesterday it was neither available to public feedback nor open to volunteer authors desiring to launch their own knols, what it looks like today will almost certainly be very different from what it looks like a year from now, or perhaps even in month from now. With the door now open to anyone that wants to walk in and the freedom to go in any direction - not to mention ad revenues to be reaped and shared with authors - what we will see will be akin to the Apple App Store for the everyman and woman - not just for developers, but for anyone who can type.

Here’s my take on what to expect, how the knol experiment may evolve, and why I think it matters - a lot.

Read the rest of this blog entry

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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.