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Google may pride itself on being a market leader when it comes to new innovations, but the trust is probably some far from it. Over the last five years you would be pushed to find a single new Google product that the company actually developed from scratch.
Instead what you find is product after product which was copied from another competitor. The latest to this is Google Knol, intended to be a place where people can come and write articles about anything they want. Sound familar? It should to anyone that has ever used Wikipedia or ShowMoreInfo.
Google's strategy is simple, copy someone else, add a few tweaks and then use its massive audience to push the product.
But this hasn't always worked. In fact, there are quite a few failures the company would rather you didn't know about. For example Google Answers, this was a first attempt at a collaborative community where people could ask questions and get answers. Its failure was spectacular, beaten into place by Experts Exchange and the late comer Yahoo! Answers.
The main reason for its failure was the fact that Google does everything to make money, it tries to monetize any service it has, and in the case of Google Answers it got it badly wrong. No one wants to pay to get some advice, we want it for free!
In the case of Knol, its failure has already been predetermined. Wikipedia is far more respected and widespread than Knol will ever be. This will be yet another Google failure, hidden from public view.
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