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Google continues with its retiring strategy of its services that it finds has not given it much that it expected. This includes retirement of Knol too, the site where users’ can practice their skills of writings and express their knowledge and understanding on any subject they want to. It is basically a writing site, though many might have not heard of it, but it has received a fame light of its own in its heyday. There are around thousands of writers for it on a regular basis. Google emailed everyone saying:

“As part of Google’s prioritization of product efforts, we will be retiring Knol.  From now through April 30th, 2012, Knol will work as usual, but we’ve made it easy for you to download your knols to file and/or export them to WordPress.com.  From May 1, 2012 through October 1, 2012, knols will no longer be viewable, but can be downloaded and exported.  After that time, knol content will no longer be accessible.  We hope that this timeline provides you ample time to transition your content.  For more information, please visit our FAQ: https://knol-redirects.appspot.com/faq.html

Thank you,

The Knol team

© 2012 Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043

You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Knol product or account.”

Knol was launched in 2008 for eager writers to get their knowledge out to the world. The interesting meaning of the word knol being the unit of knowledge. Users created knols, or units of knowledge about specific fields on which they authoritatively know about. Some compared it with Wikipedia, but there was no match and there are many differences between the two services as well. There was however no neutrality or sources of the content and there were also sale and promotional pieces on knol. Some knols even had more than one writer. Hence, knowledge was in a way a bit haphazard. Google thought not to let it be so.

Since Google is “prioritizing” its product efforts, it believes in discontinuing with knol so that it can work for high impact products. Despite many users who dedicate honest knols, Google thinks that it is not worth being out there for its users. So for those of you who are knol users out there, export your knols before April 30 and it will be lost forever on October 1 this year. The content will not be viewable after April 30, but still can be downloaded and exported.

[ttjad]