

Google Knol is Evil - IsaacSchlueter
http://www.seldo.com/weblog/2008/07/28/google_knol_is_evil

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Maro
Knol is unnecessary. The single differentiating thing about Wikipedia is that
everybody edits the same page about a certain topic. With Knol, everybody
creates their own, which is just like... the Internet. As in, I can put up a
homepage on my server about anything I like. So basically Google wants to have
"the Internet" on their servers, with all the pages displaying their ads.

Also, in terms of quantity and quality, Knol (unlike Wikipedia) is competing
with _all_ the rest of the Internet. With Wikipedia, the small fraction of ppl
willing to work on it _together_ create pages (that are worthwhile). With
Knol, everyone will create their own page, hence there's no difference between
them and the rest of the independent Internet.

I think Knol will die off within a year.

~~~
eru
Perhaps it will mutate into something else and be saved?

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paul
This is so stupid. Pagerank is based on links, Knol has a lot of links,
therefore it has good pagerank. Why is that evil?

Update: At the moment this comment is moderated -2, and the factually
incorrect reply is +4. Nice.

~~~
nickb
How many sites/pages have you seen that have received a rank of 5 in a day and
appear on the first page of SERPs, often at the top spot? As for number of
incoming links, I doubt Knol pages have many from non-Google properties...
they've been out there for less than a week.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
But think about it. It would be such an incredibly stupid move for google to
slay their golden goose just to prop up one of many new projects.

And I am actually unable to consistently reproduce evidence for preferencial
ranking. If you search google for "Knee Surgery" knol is #109 and wikipedia is
#11. The same search on yahoo gives you knol on #78 and wikipedia on #3

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benl
Give me a break. This post, and an number of the other Knol-is-bad commentary
pieces floating around, boil down to not much more than "Google owes me/my
friends a living".

This quote is priceless: "The company whose mission is to 'organize the
world's information' is straying into 'monetizing the world's information'"

And how, precisely, is Google supposed to organize the world's information
without monetizing it?

Some people need to calm down. If it's true that Google are inflating the
PageRank of Knol pages, then they're damaging their most valuable product --
high quality search results. And it is well within their rights to do that if
they choose.

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bprater
Is it possible that Knol ranks high because its lives in the Google domain?
And that no one touched the algorithm?

I can't imagine Google not understanding that this could happen. Hopefully,
they'll speak up soon.

~~~
agotterer
Do they really need to explain themselves? I'm on board with the knol has been
linked from every major site with a high PR and most likely helped increase
the page rank. But even if google gave it an extra push or piggy backed on the
google.com domain, isn't that within their right? Its THEIR site, they can do
whatever they want. I don't want to defend them and empower them to manipulate
results at a cost of control. But what it comes down to is, if it pisses
enough people off they will take their search somewhere else (cuil did just
launch, HAH!). Also want to throw out that a search for "site:knol.google.com"
brings back 1,500 results. I don't know if thats a major concern yet.

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sethg
FWIW, when I searched for "search engine" on Google, the first[ _] results
were Dogpile, AltaVista (?!), and Ask.com. When I did the same search on
Yahoo, the first result was Yahoo, and Google was second. When I did it on
Ask.com, the first result was for Ask.com and Google wasn't even on the first
page (except for a "Narrow Your Search" link in the sidebar referring to
"Google UK Search Engine"). Go figure.

[_]excluding the "related searches", news articles, sponsored links, and other
effluvia that gets put at the top of the page

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aditya
I don't understand the argument. It's google's search engine, if they want to
rank certain things higher, why not?

If people don't like the result content, they'll go to the competition!

~~~
nickb
_I don't understand the argument. It's Microsoft's operating system, if they
want to pre-install certain apps, why not?_

Google's heading in the same direction as MS. They'll probably end up in the
same court room in Washington DC few years from now.

~~~
neilc
_It's Microsoft's operating system, if they want to pre-install certain apps,
why not?_

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with Microsoft pre-installing apps, just
like there is nothing wrong with Apple pre-installing apps on OSX, or Sun on
Solaris.

~~~
vaksel
if it wasn't, they wouldn't have lost all those anti-trust suits

~~~
akd
The courts do not always assess right and wrong -- they are concerned with
legal and illegal, which isn't the same thing.

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fbailey
Do you have many links from google ? ... besides the Wikipedia Frontpage it's
possibly the only other PR infinite Domain

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MoeDrippins
Seriously, hasn't the "...is evil" meme run its course, 10x over?

~~~
iron_ball
Is Evil Considered Harmful (spoiler: yes)

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tss
If they don't get the issue of Knol pagerank sorted out soon, they are going
to be hit with a massive anti trust lawsuit. And they are going to lose.

I'm curious as to why everyone is so surprised that this is happening though.
It already worked like this with blogs hosted through Blogspot and websites
hosted through Google Pages.

~~~
kylec
_If they don't get the issue of Knol pagerank sorted out soon, they are going
to be hit with a massive anti trust lawsuit. And they are going to lose._

I certainly hope not. Google, as a private company, should be free to display
whatever they want in the search results. Once we start litigating and
mandating search placement it becomes a no-win situation. If site A is placed
above site B, site B sues. If site B is above site A, site A sues.

~~~
tss
There is certainly solid legal ground for arguing that Google giving
preferential search results to itself is an anticompetitive practice. It would
be different if Google didn't control the vast majority of the search market,
but it does.

Let's say there is a phone book company that pretty much controls the entire
market. Google's actions are akin to the phonebook company only listing
businesses that it owns in the main pages, while listing everything else in an
appendix. Anticompetitive practice, to be sure. The phonebook company might
argue, "Well since we are so tightly integrated with out own businesses, it is
much easier to index them. Our competitors ending up in the back is simply an
unintended side effect". Possibly true, but it's not going to fly in court.

To be honest, I don't care if Google is giving preferential treatment to Knol.
But please, establish some plausible deniability. The speed in which Knol is
being indexed is far too obvious. I think it would be a damn shame if Google
were to lose its hold on the search market because of a lawsuit.

~~~
kylec
Google Maps is also integrated into the Google search. Any time it detects
that you've entered a mappable location it provides a Google Maps link. If
this feature were removed by, say, a lawsuit by Mapquest I think that Google
would become less effective, and everyone would suffer as a result.

That's just my personal opinion, however. I had (and still have) no objection
to Microsoft bundling a web browser and media player in Windows, and yet
they've been hit by antitrust charges.

~~~
axod
Maybe Microsoft would have been let off if their web browser and media player
weren't such terrible products.

