In today’s market, competition is essential. That is the reasoning behind Google coming up with its Knol as a response to Wikipedia. In my first two blogs, I attempted to explain the difference between the two. I wanted to try and compare and contrast the two even futher this time.

Wikipedia was created first and has enjoyed great success by the Wikimedia Foundation, which is a not-for-profit foundation that has created an entire line of free-content projects. One does not have to be a scholar on any subject to edit or contribute to articles with Wikipedia. One could just simply be a casual reader and decide to edit or contribute to the articles. Here is a video on How to use Wikipedia:







Google decided to go a step farther than Wikimedia with its Knol project. Knol allows its users to create their own, individual articles and not allow anyone to contribute to the article unless they are invited to do so. The “author” may accept comments from people who view his or her Knol and decide to edit it and may also decide to collaborate with other “authors”. The following is a video on How to create a Google Knol:

Last time I blogged about Google Knol and I wrote that it was Google's answer to Wikipedia. I thought that this time I would take the time to explain actually what Wikipedia is all about because there may be some people who actually do not know about it

Wikipedia is defined as a multi-lingual, Weg-based, free-content encyclopedia project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About. The articles posted on Wikipedia are used as a guide to provide its users to related pages with other information. Unlike Google Knol, Wikipedia is written colaboratively by different people from around the world. If you have access to the Internet, then you can make changes to just about any Wikipedia articles.

One doesn't even have to have any specific qualifications to contribute to an article. The very intent of Wikipedia is to cover existing knowledge not actually create any new research. Anyone can cross-reference & add to articles if they want. Wikipedia has actual editing policies that they administer and a standard to which it holds the information. Any disputed and substandard information is subject to be removed. Wikipedia was created in 2001 and now has over 75,000 active contributors.