Opinion: Is Google closer to becoming a media company after releasing Knol?

Knol, Google's Wikipedia rival, may be inciting fear in media companies as they increasingly begin to see it as a competitor, reported The New York Times (NYT). Knol features user-generated content which authors have control over and which Google may pay for through advertising.

"Google can say they are not in the content business, but if they are paying people and distributing and archiving their work, it is getting harder to make that case," said Jason Calacanis, chief executive of Mahalo, a search engine that employs editors to write on different subjects.

Google will not own the copyright to Knol content and neither will the website contain the Google logo. The company's aim is to guide people towards the "answer" they want and it doesn't intend to own or create any content, said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker. Knol allows people to create and publish information and the only role that Google has in this is to "organize that information", according to Stricker.

While some people like Wenda Harris Millard, co-chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, worry about the bias of Google search results, Stricker said that if Knol pages do rank high, it is because they "earned their position", reported the New York Times.

Calacanis expressed concern about Google overtaking search results, which may "alienate Web publishers that are Google's advertising partners" although Google might not actually "artificially favor its sites", reported the NYT.

Google currently owns YouTube, blogging service Blogger and Usenet archives, a digital discussion board collection that is older than the Web. Google also digitalizes books that show up on search results as well as containing stories from the Associated Press in its Google News service and publishing stock market information on Google Finance.

Source: NYT

See also:
Google launches paid Wikipedia alternative