knol

Knol was a knowledge-sharing platform launched by Google in 2008. The service aimed to organize information on the web by author rather than by a purely collaborative editing model. Each article published on the site was called a knol and carried the name of an individual author, along with a brief biography and a link to the author’s profile.

Readers could read knols, rate them, and leave comments. Authors retained ownership of their content and could update their articles over time. The system emphasized attribution and sought to improve trust and credibility on the web by providing clear author identity on each page and in search results.

Knol was accessible at knol.google.com and was integrated with Google’s search ecosystem. It positioned itself as a way to complement Wikipedia and other knowledge bases by offering greater author visibility and accountability, while allowing users to explore knols by topic or author and to discover related content.

In 2012, Google announced the shutdown of Knol. The service was retired, with knols removed or redirected and users given options to export their content. The Knol project ended as a standalone platform, but it contributed to ongoing discussions about authorship, attribution, and the organization of knowledge on the web.