Up to this point Google has built its business on helping people find information. In the future, Google also will help people create information. It inexorably will move, in other words, from being a search utility into an information utility. The reason is pretty simple.
What Google does is amass user interactions and attention by giving people powerful search tools. But its monetization scheme is classic media: ad revenues. In some sense, Google "packages" and "distributes" information and content, as does a cable TV operator, magazine or radio or TV broadcaster.
Google also creates its own content, as when it supports
Blogger users, for example, or when it pays people for creating compelling content for
YouTube. In that role Google is akin to a movie studio, newspaper or record label, in paying for the creation of content.
As some might note, Google has had a mixed record of success in launching new services. It owns YouTube because its homegrown video site wasn't getting traction. GTalk hasn't moved the needle in the instant messaging space. So there is nothing inevitable about the commercial success of Google's
Knol effort.
Knol is a new Web service being developed by Google meant to serve as a storehouse of knowledge on the Internet. It apparently will be based on content contributed by various experts on different topics.
Knol will allow people to create Web pages on virtually any topic, and where Wikipedia attempts to create unified entries representing the best information the entire base of users can create, Knol might aim to aggregate various expert opinions on subjects, even if conflicting, rather than a unified view of any subject.
Think of the approach as a library of great books rather than a dictionary.
Google says the Knol project is meant to focus attention on authors who have sufficient expertise on particular topics. Something more akin to a research tool than Google's engine might be, in that sense.
Also, keep in mind that Knol has been described as a project. As sometimes happens, Google might simply decide to go another direction or cancel the project.
The overall impression, though, is that Google is slowly adding content creation to its content-finding mission. Another change is that Google also is a large ad placement entity. In that sense it redefines media in other ways.
It acts as an advertising agency for placement of ads and publishes content as well. So Google is not simply providing search or ad placement. It is contributing to a reshaping of the traditional way media and other parts of the value chain have operated.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
