What Google Knols Can Teach You About Google’s Philosophy

Wary? More.
Google needs to learn that now that they have great power, the most important thing they have to learn is how not to use it.
Perhaps then posterity will not see them as a dampening effect on the development of the net and the world that is coming to depend on it.
(If posterity is allowed to publish such a view. Will there be a knol about it in 200 years?)

Great read, Michael. I thought perhaps I was the only one worried about Knol…initially I think it’ll offer some nice marketing opportunities for those who use it properly but Google clearly has ulterior motives…

You killed me again with the “communist inspired utopian dream world.” Next stop for you… the Google Gulag for some “re-education.”

Although I agree with your sentiment to a large extent, I think it’s important to remember that Google is not the government and that they do not have absolute power. Google customers can walk away and Google is at the mercy of the market.

I do, in part, agree with you. Google has no right to automatically assume they have a right to include copyrighted words in the “Google Library”. This is, if nothing else, a simple matter of courtesy and of recognising the author’s legal right to their own work. And I do suggest anyone who wants to contribute a “Knol” have their own attorney review the TOS first, if retaining control over their work matters to them. That caution is wise when posting to any site other than your own.

However, your comments may mislead authors on some points. Many authors feel they profit by any publicity. Some even choose to give away free e-books, claiming they see increased sales when they do so. So, while I agree Google’s approach is high handed, please don’t give authors the idea it is sure to harm their sales. That isn’t even the point – if you invest the time and effort writing a book, you alone have the right to decide what is done with it. Even if Google proves conclusively inclusion always helps book sales, the author should still have to explicitly agree to be included before Google starts scanning.

Finally, for all your justifiable fear of Google’s potential for harm, you seem to have missed the most chilling implication of their continuing growth. Simply put, the more they become the site people turn to for information, the more control they have over the public’s access to information. And, to anyone with a knowledge of history, that is a terrifying thought. What would Goebbels and his masters have given for even the limited control Google already has? (The chance to ‘bury’ information selectively was less than they had once they reached power, but far more than they could manage before that time. They had to resort to the threat of violence to silence opponents – a tactic that could have backfired.) What will ever happen if control over Google passes into truly evil hands and alternative sources are muzzled? (I agree, Google does many things wrong, but those in charge aren’t the equal of Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot.)

Michael,
This is good stuff…I doubt you wrote it. I think you had Ron Paul write it. Just kidding. As I said before, why hate Microsoft when you have Google?

My prediction will be that once the EU constitution is ratified, Google will become the “Official” Knowledge sharing device of this new communist state, run by unelected officials hehe. Just wanted to ruffle a few feathers.

I like John Allsopp’s suggestion. Google should scrap the approach of a spot on Google for other people’s content, and work on establishing semantics that will let them better scrape pages.
I like it
The main ‘downside’ from their point of view is it doesn’t add a revenue stream, but that wouldn’t stop them moving to a superior system, surely? (Some days I am less cynical than others)

@Kevin: Does it occur to you to use an alternative search engine? I mean, people bitch and whine about Google’s dominance in search, but they rarely take steps to reduce their reach.

If all the webmasters who have a problem with Google’s business practices were to start using other search engines and influence others (through word of mouth, blogs, whatevah) to do the same, perhaps Google would have to look again at their approach.

You might think there’s a lack of viable alternatives, but Yahoo and Live aren’t *that* bad at relevance, and with Live you stand a better chance of attaining a good ranking for popular keywords. Maybe between posts calling Google out for bad practice, Michael could spend a bit of time writing about alt search engines?

@Igor: Being Googlee is the only food in town because no-one can be bothered to eat in the other restaurants! I agree that it’s an improbable approach, but it’s either that or watch Google become the top result in its own search engine for everything. Why visit another website again?

I assumed that people would want to contribute knols on a topic/topics in order to create another freely available encyclopedia-esque source…but one that provides readers the opportunity to evaluate the information being provided based on the author’s/authors’ credentials. Why would someone need the expectation of monetary gain through ad revenue to contribute? It’s still an encyclopedia we’re talking about. When has anyone expected to make money from writing an encyclopedia entry?