Heather Foeh

I’ve been reading a few articles here and there about Knols - the new item from Google on their quest for world domination. (By the way, I say that without any malice. I like things to be orderly and easy to find, so if Google can make the whole world that way, I’ll roll over and let them rule us all. Sorry.) What the heck is a knol, you ask? According to the site: “A knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic.”

I checked out the Knol site tonight and read through a few of these authoritative articles and I was underwhelmed. There seems to be an overabundance of health-related articles. They are written by doctors, so I guess that’s a good thing, and if I ever need more information about Ganglion Cysts, I know right where to go. One thing I don’t like is that there’s not really a browsing method. You can search just fine (hello, it’s Google), but one of the things I love (and HATE) about Wikipedia is that I can keep clicking related links for three days straight if I want to. The Knol site doesn’t have that interconnectedness (a.k.a., quagmire of non-productivity) and I think it needs it. The search box is scary - I don’t know what I want to search for. I want to browse, dammit.

I haven’t really figured out the allure of the Knol yet, nor am I sure what Google will get out of it…other than the fact that there are 2 ads on the right hand side of each topic. But really? Are those two little ads per page enough to make them want to create the Land of Knol?

Anyone else have an opinion??