Google Knol - Douple Dips the Chip

The newly unveiled Google "Knol" (derived from knowledge) tool is certainly a hot button topic. Industry experts, bloggers and everyone in between have been responding rapid fire since the soft announcement on December 13, 2007. Google created Knol, an unofficial hybrid of Wikipedia and Squidoo, to encourage authoritative authorship on the web. Users will create pages that provide a thorough overview of a topic. Ads may also be implemented. Google emphasizes the author will add to the significance of an article. For more information click here.

Knol pages will rank organically and feed Google's AdSense model. This issue is complicated by the fact the only ad structure supported by Knol is, you guessed it, AdSense. It seems as if this double dipping may lead to Google dominated SERP's.

So the real question is; does this present a conflict of interest? Examples of similar instances are readily available such as Microsoft packaging Internet Explorer as the default web browser or Apple packaging Safari. In the instance of Knol, Google is "providing" an ad service for the tool. The difference? At this time there is no alternative ad platform. Knol users wishing to include an ad in their page will share revenue. Result? Google will have an even more captive audience.

As it stands now, Knol is in test-mode and we have yet to see the final version. In light of this, the implementation of AdSense as the only supported ad model is still not finalized. However, this glimpse behind the curtain has fueled skepticism of Google's practices in relationship to their ranking system. Only time will tell, but I would keep an eye on Google around the chips and dip.