| By Maureen O'Gara |
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| January 6, 2007 11:45 AM EST |
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26,832 |
In a not very innovative move Google is going to try to copy Wikipedia's shtick with a soup-to-nuts, online, user-generated encyclopedia of all human knowledge dubbed Knol that's currently being beta tested by a reportedly small group of invitees.
Contributors, who are supposed to sign their pieces, not be anonymous like Wikipedia - a good thing - will be able to monetize their individually written, Creative Commons-licensed articles with ads, sharing the revenues with Google.
Google will provide the tools and rank entries. Fact checking will supposedly be left to the readers - (who will go to the library and look things up in a book?).
Wikipedia currently has 8.2 million articles written in 200 languages.
Tit for tat, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been working on a for-profit Wikia search engine due out any minute now.
Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025. Twitter: @MaureenOGara
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