Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales the New Google Killer?

Understanding the tremendous limitations inherent in the current search system, Wikipedia found Jimmy Wales believes he can build a better one that can provide what Google (GOOG) hasn't been able to.

There are several things that are driving Wales' passion. One is the results that come up on current search systems that in many cases are irrelevant, frustrating and time consuming to rummage through. He said, "A search for Ford should yield Ford Motor Co., as the correct first answer."

Next, he likes the idea of a challenge, noting that with the financial war chest that Google has, "For developers, it would be kind of cool to say 'Google has 11 gazillion dollars, and we're going to get a bunch of people together on the Internet, and we're going to kick their butts.' "That's cool, right? I think it's cool, he said."

Third, he enthusiastically embraces open source, freedom, participation and democracy on the Internet. To him a wiki search would be much more powerful and accurate as it plays to these strengths.

His beginning strategy will be to start with a couple of open source and Java Search engines that are based upon the Apache Jakarta Project called Lucene and Nutch. Programmers would be able to adjust, copy and exchange the code among one another while others give feedback, according to Wales.

While wales does have backing from Amazon.com and others, he is wise in implementing an ad revenue model from the beginning, while relying upon some hired workers for the project. I think this is smart. The idea that these things can be done for free needs to be done away with on the front side.

YouTube's struggle to find an ad model to monetize its costly site has come from the very nature of how the company started and positioned itself. Now they will have to renege on that and provide ads to make it work; something that is already causing them a lot of problems.

It is my thought that this could really be scary to Google. In my experience and estimation, they really haven't improved the search results as far as accuracy goes. If someone can come up with a much more accurate result, what would that mean in terms of time, money and targeting? It would turn the whole search landscape upside down.

I'm not sure if this is considered a threat my Google, but knowing that they've secured themselves against their biggest rivals in search, they are going after other areas that are outside of their expertise. Will that hurt them over the long run if a truly better search engine that is considered "cool" as well is built? I think it could.

Wales also said that a lot of the details like concerns about protection of privacy and others haven't been worked out yet. The first beta should be rolled out sometime within the next several months he said. Do you think it's a good idea and has a realistic chance of being successful?

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From Times Online

December 14, 2007

Google unveils rival to Wikipedia

Search engine has unveiled 'knol', an online, user-generated reference work that will seek to usurp Wikipedia

Rhys Blakely

Google is to go head-to head with Wikipedia, the web’s largest reference work, setting up a clash between two of the web’s biggest brands.

A new Google service, dubbed "knol", will invite individuals to write “authoritative articles” on their areas of expertise, the firm revealed yesterday.

As on Wikipedia, content on knol (the name comes from “knowledge”) will be free to access. In a departure from the non-profit Wikipedia model, however, knol's authors will be able to attach advertising to their work and take a share of revenues.

Google hopes that knol articles will cover “all topics, from scientific concepts ... to entertainment.” Significantly, the project will see Google help generate new editorial content, a process its executive have previously said it is “philosophically opposed to”.

Knol, which is currently in a test phase but is expected to be opened to the public in the coming months, also pitches Google against yet another new rival in a fresh sector. Moving away from its roots in internet search, Google recently opened a new front against mobile makers such as Nokia by unveiling a new operating system for handheld devices.

It also has ambitions to compete with groups such as EDS in data storage and Oracle and Microsoft in business software. Last month it confirmed it will bid against groups likely to include AT&T for a portion of America’s airwaves that could be used to roll-out a wireless broadband network.

Wikipedia represents another similarly well-established incumbent. In October the online encyclopaedia, which relies on donations for funds, was visited by 107 million people, or a third of the "active global internet population", according to Nielsen Online, the analyst. That made it the eighth most-visited online destination.

Google's search engine was the world's most popular site, with more than 260 million users - though its own reference work, Google Scholar was only fifteenth in its class, with about 4.5 million users.

Jimmy Wales, the Wikipedia founder, who recently launched a rival search engine to Google’s, questioned whether knol would be able to generate enough “quality content”. He also suggested that knol articles would lack balance. “They are not going to allow collaboration and aren’t going to go for Wikipedia’s neutral style,” he said.

However, Google's determination that knol should turn a profit appears to have dictated a sharp departure from Wikipedia's editorial model. Where Wikipedia is based on collaboration between authors, knol will foster rivaly.

Contributors to knol will not be able to contribute anonymously and will not be able to edit each others' work - two of the defining characteristics of Wikipedia. Whereas in Wikipedia, readers find only one entry on, say, the First World War, on knol authors will submit separate pieces that will compete for advertising income.

Taking a cue from social network-style sites, knol will also invite readers to participate by rating the quality of entries and by adding “comments, questions, edits, additional content.”

Rebecca Jennings, an analyst for Forrester, said: "Google is setting out to compete in social media, where it is lagging rivals such as Facebook.”

"A knol ... is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read,” Mr Manber, a Google spokesman, said.

Wikipedia was founded in 2001 and now has more than eight million articles in 253 languages - from Afrikaans to Zazaki. In contrast to Google, it has refused to alter its policies to operate in different countries - something that has led it to being blocked in states such as China.

However, anonymous and sometimes malicious edits have threatened to undermine Wikipedia's reputation. In 2005, in what Mr Wales termed "the worst" incident to hit the site, John Seigenthaler, the founding editorial director of USA Today, was linked to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy by a Wikipedia article. Attacking Wikipedia, Mr Seigenthaler called it an irresponsible haven for "volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects".

This summer, it emerged that a host of blue-chip companies had altered their entries on Wikipedia in an attempt to cover up embarrassing episodes in their histories. The discovery was made by WikiScanner, a site that traces the source of changes to the world's largest online reference work by matching edits to a database of the unique IP addresses of the computers that were used to make them.

Machines belonging to organisations including Wal-Mart, Disney, Sony, the Labour Party, the CIA and the Vatican had been used to rewrite entries, it was found.

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Google debuts knowledge project

Google debuts knowledge project

The knol system is an attack on Wikipedia, say experts

Google has kicked off a project to create an authoritative store of information about any and every topic.

The search giant has already started inviting people to write about the subject on which they are known to be an expert.

Google said it would not act as editor for the project but will provide the tools and infrastructure for the pages.

Many experts see the initiative as an attack on the widely used Wikipedia communal encyclopaedia.

'Knol'

Writing about the project on the official Google blog, Udi Manber, one of the heads of engineering at the search firm, said it was all about sharing useful knowledge.

By indexing the web, Google strives to make information more easily accessible. However, wrote Mr Manber, not all the information on the web was "well organised to make it easily discoverable".

By getting respected authors to write about their specialism Google hopes to start putting some of that information in better order.

The system will centre around authored articles created with a tool Google has dubbed "knol" - the word denotes a unit of knowledge - that will make webpages with a distinctive livery to identify them as authoritative.

Mr Manber wrote: "A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read."

The knol pages will get search rankings to reflect their usefulness. Knols will also come with tools that readers can use to rate the information, add comments, suggest edits or additional content.

Revenue from any adverts on a knol page will be shared with its author.

Industry commentator Nicholas Carr said the knol project was a "head-on competitor" with Wikipedia. He said it was an attempt by Google to knock ad-free Wikipedia entries on similar subjects down the rankings.

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

By Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. Portfolio; 320 pages; $25.95. Atlantic Books; £16.99

A believers' guide to how the emergence of community on the internet is fundamentally changing business.

Students 'should use Wikipedia'

Last Updated: Friday, 7 December 2007, 08:04 GMT E-mail this to a friend Printable version

Students 'should use Wikipedia'

By Alistair Coleman BBC Monitoring Jimmy Wales says students should be able to cite Wikipedia Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said teachers who refuse students access to the site are "bad educators". Speaking at the Online Information conference at London's Olympia, he dismissed the long-running controversy over the site's authority. He said he now thinks that students should be able to cite the online encyclopaedia in their work. Previously, Mr Wales believed that the website, which is edited by users, lacked the authority for academic work. As long as an article included accurate citations, he said he had "no problem" with it being used as a reference for students, although academics would "probably be better off doing their own research". "You can ban kids from listening to rock 'n' roll music, but they're going to anyway," he added. "It's the same with information, and it's a bad educator that bans their students from reading Wikipedia." In 2005, at the height of the controversy over the site's accuracy, Mr Wales told the BBC that students who copied information from Wikipedia "deserved to get an F grade", and that the site should really be used as a "stepping stone" to more authoritative information. New editing and checking procedures have made Wikipedia more trustworthy, said the Wikipedia founder. Changing procedures Since the controversy, in which it emerged that the "free editing" policy had allowed articles containing inaccuracies and bias to appear, the site has introduced a system of real-time peer review, in which volunteers check new and updated articles for accuracy and impartiality. Volunteers check Wikipedia entries for inaccuracies, bias Despite advances in technology, there are no plans to automate this process. "There is no substitute for peer critique," Mr Wales told delegates. It is this perceived lack of authority that has drawn criticism from other information sources. Ian Allgar of Encyclopaedia Britannica maintains that, with 239 years of history and rigorous fact-checking procedures, Britannica should remain a leader in authoritative, politically-neutral information. Mr Allgar pointed out the trustworthy nature of paid-for, thoroughly-reviewed content, and noted that Wikipedia is still prone to vandalism. But Britannica and Wikipedia should not be seen as direct competitors. Wikipedia, he said, had made the use of encyclopaedias "trendy and popular" with young people, which could only benefit Britannica's subscription-led service. Content licensing Jimmy Wales also announced that the site would be rolling out a new version of its free documentation licence. We are the Red Cross for information. We won't sell out to Google Jimmy Wales Although Wikipedia allows users to copy, modify and redistribute information, commercially or non-commercially, the new licensing regime, based on the existing Creative Commons scheme, would "bring Wikipedia into line with the rest of the free content culture". Mr Wales reiterated his commitment to keeping the Wikimedia Foundation free of corporate sponsorship, and of major donors who might want control of online information. "We are the Red Cross for information. We won't sell out to Google," he said. The foundation is, however, expanding into the search function, with July's announcement of the Wikia search facility which combines open-source searching and social networking. "This is a political statement against proprietary-driven software tools," Mr Wales said. "Wiki wants to give people the maximum freedom to do good."