Google to Offer Revenue Share in Wikipedia Competitor

On December 13^th Google revealed its new Wikipedia competitor named "Knol". Google's focus seems to be firmly on the interest of the writer, quality of work, recognition and of course a share of the Google Ad revenue.

Excerpt from the blog on Author focus:

"The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word "knol" as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we'll do the rest."

Authors keep their rights

Another key point from the blog is that Google intends to keep the rights to the content firmly in the authors hands, which is very important to web based writers. Quote: "Google will not ask for any exclusivity on any of this content and will make that content available to any other search engine." It will be interesting to see the writing contract, as I'm sure there's going to be one, in the coming weeks as they open Knol up to more users and the public.

Revenue Sharing

The most interesting distinction, from a writer's point of view, is that Google will offer "revenue share" from Google ads placed on the Knol page. As per Google's official blog post, Google ads will be the option of the writer of that particular Knol. Although Google has not revealed the exact revenue share from Google Ad's in Knol, I would guess that it will be similar to the revenue share from Google Ad's on web sites. Revenue share from Google Ad's can be a very lucrative stream of income. Depending on the exact share of revenue, it could beat or rival the offerings from some of the best writing sites on the web.