Google Knol Prediction Revisited

Back in Decem­ber 2007, I made a bet against Google Knol, the search giant’s answer to Wikipedia. In a fair­ly involved piece, I list­ed three rea­sons why Knol would­n’t upend Wikipedia. Now fast for­ward 18+ months: Tech Crunch has report­ed that Knol’s traf­fic is trend­ing down. It peaked in Feb­ru­ary at around 320,000 vis­i­tors per month, accord­ing to Quant­cast esti­mates. Now it’s at around 174,000. (See the graph here.) The bot­tom line? You can’t win at every­thing. But for­tu­nate­ly there’s some good new things com­ing out of Google, and we’ll be men­tion­ing them in the com­ing days.

PS In case you did­n’t hear, Wikipedia is start­ing to put edi­to­r­i­al restric­tions on cer­tain entries. The lais­sez-faire days are com­ing to an end.