Knol
Google asked named experts to publish competing authoritative articles and earn advertising revenue, but the answer to Wikipedia never built a durable audience.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Officially Gone
- Peak stage
- general availability
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A formally released Google knowledge-publishing platform organised around author-owned articles called knols.
Writers could publish, collaborate, approve suggested edits, identify credentials and share AdSense revenue.
Existence timeline
Google begins testing expert-authored knowledge pages.
The platform opens to all writers and readers.
Authors publish competing pages with moderated collaboration.
Google provides export and WordPress migration options.
Knol pages leave the live web.
The final download window closes.
Why it ended
Google ended viewing in April 2012 and removed remaining hosted content after an export period in October.
Last confirmed trace
Author exports, archived pages, official launch posts and the open-source Annotum migration preserve portions of the collection.
What it left behind
Knol remains a revealing alternate model for online knowledge built around attribution and parallel answers rather than a single consensus article.
How we classified it
The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer obtainable in its original public form.
Verified normal public availability maps to 100 under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.