- published: 13 May 2016
- views: 343760
Knol was a Google project that aimed to include user-written articles on a range of topics. The project was led by Udi Manber of Google, announced December 13, 2007, and was opened in beta to the public on July 23, 2008 with a few hundred articles mostly in the health and medical field. Knol had no policies regarding sources or neutrality. Some Knol pages were opinion papers of one or more authors, and others described products for sale. Some articles were how-to articles or explain product use. Other people could post comments below an article, such as to refute opinions or reject product claims.
Lower-case, the term knol, which Google defined as a "unit of knowledge", referred to an article in the project. Several experts saw Knol as Google's attempt to compete with Wikipedia, while others pointed out the differences between the projects.
On January 16, 2009, Google announced that Knol had grown to 100,000 articles, and users from 197 countries visited Knol on an average day. Since then, the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Currents: Influenza and the Harvard University-sponsored forum for Healthcare Information Technology (HIT) Platform have utilized Knol-based collections for rapid exchange of research.