Will Google Knol and Google Books play nicely together?
Anyone writing for Knol is likely to at least peruse Wikipedia content before publishing. And if they see anything good, they are at liberty to simply lift and copy it over to Knol, and get a adsense check for their time.So, in a way, Google has found a way to monetize Wikipedia content after all.
The name of Google Knol is a tip off that there is something basically broken in the concept — there is a damned good reason why there are no “knols” in the real world. Knowledge doesn’t come in units.
As a publisher, I wonder if there has been any thought given to how Google Knol and Google Book Search should play together. It doesn’t look like it at first glance. The sample author Knol page for Rachel Manber doesn’t even have a link to Rachel Manber on Google Book Search orGoogle Scholar. Why the heck not?
Hey Google, instead of having your engineers duplicate Wikipedia with daffy “knols”, why not involve some publishers? We know a little bit about promoting authors too… and we have this great way of binding “knols” together in paper and charging twenty or thirty bucks a package. It’s called a “book.”
