Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia
Contrary to popular blogosphere wisdom, Google Knol is NOT a Wikipedia killer.
How much longer can the Google triumvarite coast on massive, over blown, over hyped, brand good will?
I heard Kevin Gough, Google Enterprise, boast to IT buyers at the Enterprise Search Summit in New York City in May that the Google logo is the most valuable component of the Google Search Appliance strategy! in other words, just slapping on the words powered by Google increases user preception of the quality of the results, regardless of actual search merit.
IT manager reaction to Google’s consumerization of the enterprise pitch, however: “We don’t want to be lucky in enterprise search,” alluding to the “silly” consumer facing “I’m feeling lucky” button at Google.com.
Consumers, themselves, though are becoming more and more unlucky, universally, at Google.com.
Upon the launch of Universal Search in May, I analyzed why Google Search will NOT rule the Universe, pointing out that May 16, 2007, could very well be looked back upon as the first day that marked the beginning of the end of Google’s upward ascent.
HOW SO? When Sergey Brin and Larry Page were still idealistic Stanford University students, not billionaire, island wedding and private jet flying GOOG celebrites, they warned: “Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious”:
It could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the existing search engines. We believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.
Academic transparency, though, does not lead to $700 market cap fan fare.
Brin and Page have certainly not lived up to their promise of search engine transparency: Google is the biggest, blackest box of them all. Brin and Page have also conveniently forgotten their disdain for an advertising fueled search model. In fact, with Universal Search, advertising got even more universal, and so did Google controlled and/or Google owned and/or Google operated and/or Google hosted content and Web services and properties.
Google tarnished the vaunted Google brand by deciding to make the world’s information that Google itself generates more universally accessible rather than perpetuating the myth of democratic Google SERPS successfully ranking the chaos of billions of open Web pages.
As first page Google search results are now a hodge podge of differing meida formats retrieved from Google’s own, diverse, data sets, the Brin/Page founding principal purporting the “ten most relevant pages of the World Wide Web” will be listed, in order, on the vauluable, first Google SERP goes the forgotten way, much as Google’s “don’t be evil” slogan is but a relic cliche.
In one fell Universal Search swoop, Google has wreaked havoc not only on searchers and Websites, but on the entire multi billion dollar search marketing industry. NOW, with the impending Google Knol, not only is the Google top ten organic SERP result set gone, but Google raises the SEM and SEO ante even more, as Google pits its own Web pages against the Web’s content in a perpetual, Google ruled SERP smackdown.
The entire first-page SERP may soon consist of ONLY Google Local “Sponsored” Maps, Google News Hosted stories, YouTube Videos, Knol pages…
Wikipedia is not doomed, the integrity of Google.com is, and, by extension, GOOG.
ALSO: Google Has Insomnia: Mrs. Manber Beats 21,300,017 SERP and AdWords! and Google Zeitgeist: $200 University Payola AdWords Scam and There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers
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