There have been some discussions in blogsphere about Google trying to compete with Content producers. Knol is Google’s online article publishing service. Anybody can write article for free and earn ad revenue. Knol was recently opened for everybody after being announced last year. Many blogs have reacted strongly (Recently Problogger, Journalistopia, and earlier on Tech Crunch, Search Engine Land), on Google becoming a direct competitor to publishing partners. Is Knol in direct competition with Blogs and Media companies and is it fair?
Knol is platform to produce content. In that sense it is a competitor to platforms such as Squidoo, hubpages, Wikipedia and not Content producers. Content producers (including Bolggers) get a new platform to write on. Now we get to choose between Squidoo, Hubpages, Individual Blogs and others. Google is simply hosting content, something they are already doing with Blogger, Page Creator and Google Sites.
There is also a fear that Knols will unfairly rank better in Google search results. This is genuine fear. Even though Google probably will not manually change the rankings, they do have access to Search algorithm that others don’t. But again, Knol is a platform. Though there are chances that it will give unfair advantage to Google, the better chances are that Google will achieve high rankings for Knols by creating guides, tips, tutorials, and help section for Knol authors to help them rank high. Most of this publicly available information and tips are going to be applicable to other platforms and blogs too.
There are chances that Knol might have unfair advantage. But unless Google really does go unethical, Knol should help web community. If nothing else, fear of huge public outcry should keep Google fair.
