It used to be that you went to Google.com, dropped in a keyword or two and you were quickly whisked away to the page out in cyberspace most relevant to what you were looking for.
That’s changing, dramatically.
Go to Google today and do a simple search. On your search results page, you’ll see links to YouTube videos. You’ll see product listings from Froogle (or whatever the heck they’re calling it now), you’ll see links to pages on Google-owned blogspot.com, etc.
What you’re seeing is a closed loop where the search results are no longer sending you off into the wilds of cyberspace, but to Google’s own content. And with the announcement of Knol, their newest foray into becoming a content provider rather than just a content discovery engine, that loop is getting tighter than ever.
From the Official Google Blog:
“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.”
“We are quite experienced with ranking web pages, and we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge. We are very excited by the potential to substantially increase the dissemination of knowledge.”
Other bloggers are calling Knol a Wikipedia killer. Some think Google is going too far. Another blogger wonders how Knols will organize it’s info better than blogs do, or how attributing authors is better than what wikipedia is currently doing.
So at what point does Google’s closed loop become a noose? Time will tell.
