Probing the knowledge market
Google is now edging closer to becoming a publisher in what I call turbo-wiki mode. It’s too early to determine if Google wants to create a super-wiki, or if it will pursue more business and academic contributions.
If we dip into Google’s more than 250 patent applications, we find more than two dozen inventions related to content, embedding advertising in that content and manipulating the content to create compilations or anthologies, as well as other "interesting" services. One intriguing invention is US7096214, "System and Method for Supporting Editorial Opinion in the Ranking of Search Results." The invention points the way for Google’s algorithms to perform value judgments about content objects. Editorial judgment without human editors changes the economics of vetting documents.
Google is taking an important step forward in Web-based content acquisition and distribution. In addition, the Google technology is well suited to some organizations’ need for robust, hosted content management and distribution systems. Looking ahead, Google has found a way to resolve the copyright brambles impeding some of its projects. The solution is to become a system that allows individuals and organizations to create information as knols. Just as Google disrupted the global telecommunications sector with its open platform and hosted mobile services, enterprise publishing and traditional publishing are now in the path of Googzilla.
Stephen E. Arnold owns ArnoldIT.com, a consulting firm providing a range of analytic and consulting services worldwide, and is fascinated with Google’s impact on the knowledge management sector, e-mail sa@arnoldit.com.