The Knol Mystery

Silicon Alley Insider posts asking why Knol, Google's Wikipedia-ish content service, still survives while many of Google's experiments and acquisitions have fallen by the wayside. I think there are two ways to answer to this question. The first is: the only thing that has surprised Google in the past few years has been Wikipedia. Who would have thought that a single site would end up appearing on a huge fraction of search result pages (I can't find an exact statistic on this, even using Google...). The second answer, relating to the persistance of the project, is to do with focus. There are many projects within Microsoft which are (or have been) considered core strategic plays and thus have had consistent investment because a results has to be delivered. Today's trial-by-fire, show-me-the-numbers, has-to-be-measurable approach to innovation is quite alright, but sometimes the (top down) knowledge and intuition of the leader(s) must be heard! Perhaps there is a kill Wikipedia mandate at Google?

Comments

[Greg Linden]

Hi, Matt. For exact numbers on what fraction of search result pages have Wikipedia as the first result, in Nov 2007, apparently "27% of Google's results on the first link alone come from Wikipedia, as do 31% of Yahoo's."

Found at:

http://aixtal.blogspot.com/2007/11/search-google-yahoo-comparison.html
http://battellemedia.com/archives/004115.php

I don't know of a more recent analysis, but this percentage appears to be trending upwards over time.

If it might also be of interest, I have an old post, "One Wikipedia to rule them all", about this trend:

http://glinden.blogspot.com/2007/12/one-wikipedia-to-rule-them-all.html

[Pranam Kolari]

show-me-the-numbers brought a smile on my face :)

or perhaps, Google has a policy of letting a project run for a while. Knol is relatively new, I think.

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[Mor]

My guess: it's personal. At least from the outside it seems that Knol has been a big project for one key high-profile executive in G's Search... it could be why it's still there, Spamming our lovely Web.