Knolus

In late July, Google introduced into society open in proof version of Knol, a collaborative encyclopaedia very similar to that of Wikipedia and has been said that in future it will be a competition, rather an affirmation of free time. In reality it is simply to provide a platform online to users and researchers expert in any subject can write your articles as guides or pills of knowledge, while obtaining an economic incentive through advertising. Thus, the company’s search engine finds that an item is a “Knol” and represents a unit of independent knowledge.

The articles of the draft encyclopedia are written by registered users on Google, they can write them on an individual basis or by allowing the collective edition of the same. To do this, once created an article on the platform, its authors may decide whether the text can be edited by other users or not.

However, the Internet is not the only way that you have to admit Knol texts, as the service allows you to write articles from the publisher online with that account, or conducting an import from a text file. Currently, the DOC and PDF formats are the only ones allowed in this operation, is now out of the Open Document standard.

Encyclopedia with ads

To encourage the use of Knol, Google has offered to authors the ability to insert targeted ads in the articles of the AdWords advertising network, owned. Thus, the authors receive a percentage of the profits generated by each of the items they have created. The only condition to be able to use this option, is that the user should be given high in the advertising platform for webmasters Adsense. This method of business is the same as that used Google in its full service network.

But this is not the only incentive offered by the search engine: another way of rewarding the author is giving weight to each of their texts by quality, so that they can soon be found by the search engines and read by more people. Thus indirectly also encourages the economic dimension, since the more readers will be more likely to use advertising-related content.

To be user Knol, it is necessary to sign with the name and surname. To that end, Google checks the accuracy of the real names of each registered user. The main method for this is to make a phone call and indicate a number key.

Google has also implemented a second method that works through the credit card. Users must provide data to one of their cards so that Google check with the bank. However, it is not required to register any trade, since Google is only served from banking platforms for verification of data.
Copyleft licenses

Regarding the license, Knol used by default, a Copyleft license for the content created by users. This is a Creative Commons license Atribution 3.0, which allows the use on other websites provided that the text is attributed to the original author and distributed using the same license. If a user wants to change the type of license can select another, including a more traditional copyright license.

During the first few months, the texts in Knol will be available in English and mainly for the United States. However, little by little is expected to add new languages and countries to the platform, though still not Castilian. This is due to the type of product, where it is necessary to ascertain the real identity of each user and admit it into the Google advertising system, so that each local office of the company must take charge of development in each country.