Knol

Google's signed, ad-sharing answer to Wikipedia, opened in 2008 and closed in 2012

Shut down
19902026

Knol was a Google project for a "unit of knowledge": signed articles by named authors on any subject, with optional AdSense revenue sharing, announced in December 2007 and opened to the public on 23 July 2008 as an alternative to Wikipedia. It attracted a few hundred thousand articles, a great deal of spam and little traffic. Google announced its closure on 22 November 2011 and shut it on 30 April 2012, letting authors export to the WordPress-based Annotum.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2007
  2. 13 December 2007 other
    Knol announced

    Signed articles with a share of the ads.

  3. 2008
  4. 23 July 2008 Launch
    Knol opens to the public

    A few hundred knols, many by doctors.

  5. 2009
  6. 11 August 2009 Decline
    "A Craigslist wannabe"

    Spam and marketing overtake the reference articles.

  7. 2011
  8. 22 November 2011 Shutdown announced
    Knol to close

    Announced with Wave, Friend Connect and Gears.

  9. 2012
  10. 1 May 2012 Shutdown
    Knol goes offline

    Export to Annotum until 1 October 2012.

The site through time

Browse knol.google.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Google 2008–2012 Founded

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Google announced on 22 November 2011, in one of its "spring cleaning" rounds, that Knol would close: it stopped working on 30 April 2012 and after 1 October 2012 the content could no longer be downloaded or exported. Google worked with Solvitor and Crowd Favorite to let authors move their knols to Annotum, a WordPress-based publishing platform. By then Knol had become, in Google's own admission, a home for spam and self-promotion rather than the expert reference it had announced.

Our analysis: Knol was built on the idea that Wikipedia's weakness was anonymity, and that named authors with a share of the advertising would write better articles. What it got instead was a few good pieces, a lot of copied ones, and thousands of ads for herbal remedies. It never had Wikipedia's community, its neutrality or its ranking, and Google, which was accused of favouring it in search, never gave it the push that would have made it matter. It closed with more knols about how to make money on Knol than about anything else.

History [edit]

A unit of knowledge

Udi Manber, Google's vice president of engineering, announced Knol on 13 December 2007: an experiment in "knowledge sharing" in which each page, a knol, would be written by an author whose name and photo sat at the top, could be rated and commented on by readers, and could carry AdSense advertising with the author taking a share. Google's pitch was that the web lacked authoritative articles by people willing to sign them; the press said it was Google's Wikipedia, and Wikipedia's founders said they were not worried. Knol opened to everyone on 23 July 2008 with a few hundred articles, many by physicians, and Google's promise that it would not favour knols in search results.

It grew to well over 100,000 knols within a year, and much of the growth was the wrong kind: copied Wikipedia articles, marketing pages, self-help, and knols about Knol. The signed-author model that was meant to guarantee quality did nothing to stop it, there was no editorial process, and readers did not come. By 2009 TechCrunch was calling it "a Craigslist wannabe", and by 2010 Google itself seemed to have forgotten it existed. Traffic was a fraction of Wikipedia's, and the ads that were supposed to attract experts attracted the other kind of author.

Spring cleaning

On 22 November 2011 Google listed Knol among seven products it was closing, with Google Wave, Friend Connect and Gears. Knol went read-only, then offline on 30 April 2012, and its export tool, which moved articles to Annotum, an open-source scholarly publishing platform built on WordPress by Solvitor and Crowd Favorite, ran until 1 October 2012. A few thousand knols made the move; most simply vanished. Wikipedia carried on.

The domain today

knol.google.com redirects to a Google Help page about discontinued products.

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Sources [edit]

  1. Google debuts knowledge project BBC News 14 December 2007 [archived]
  2. Google Knol: a step too far? TechCrunch 14 December 2007 [archived]
  3. Google tries Knol, an encyclopedia to replace Wikipedia The Guardian 15 December 2007
  4. Google opens up Knol, its Wikipedia-for-cash project The Guardian 23 July 2008
  5. Poor Google Knol has gone from a Wikipedia killer to a Craigslist wannabe TechCrunch 11 August 2009 [archived]
  6. Looks like even Google forgot Knol existed TechCrunch 28 July 2010 [archived]
  7. Google announces plans to shutter Knol, Friend Connect, Wave and more TechCrunch 22 November 2011 [archived]

Last verified: 16 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).