What ever happened to Google Knol?
Actually there’s a reasonable chance that you don’t even know what Google Knol is, and just by clicking the link won’t tell you much either.
And clicking on the help link will take you to a page that uses a video to explain what a knol is. Nice irony.
If you take a step or two back, you’ll probably find it surprisingly difficult to even find Google Knol. There are no links from Google’s main page, the top links, the more links, or the even more links.
So it’s no great surprise that Knol failed. How could it succeed without people knowing where it is or how to find it?
Wikipedia had 20,000 articles and 18 language sections by the end of 2001. Seven years before Knol was even opened to the public.
I looked up knol on Knol and got the following:
I had to go to Wikipedia to finally understand what Knol is, which also had the benefit of convincing me that Knol could never replace Wikipedia.
A good idea that came too late, was poorly implemented, badly designed and hidden away from view.
How could it ever have succeeded?
