Google working on ad-based Web encyclopedia
– Google Inc. is working on a new Internet encyclopedia that will consist of material submitted by people who want to be identified as experts and possibly profit from their knowledge. The concept, outlined late Thursday in a posting on Google’s Web site, poses a potential challenge to the nonprofit Wikipedia, which has drawn upon the collective wisdom of unpaid, anonymous contributors to emerge as a widely used reference tool.
The Googlepedia, as some observers are already calling the new offering, will differ from Wikipedia by identifying who wrote each article and striving to reward the authors by giving them a chance to make money from Google’s lucrative advertising network. Critics say Wikipedia’s cloak of anonymity has made its articles more vulnerable to mischief and other abuses that have led to inaccuracies.
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