• Read Write Web, Tuesday, July 29, 2008 11:30 AM

Google has long deflected accusations of becoming a "content company", but with last week's launch of Knol, a Wikipedia competitor, Google may not be able to deflect those accusations much longer, says Read Write Web's Bernard Lunn. In a contributing post on Silicon Alley Insider, Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis makes a similar argument, but Lunn points out that Calacanis is especially conflicted about the matter because Knol is a direct competitor to his Mahalo.

Calacanis takes the view that Google is the closest thing we have on the Internet to an operating system. Lunn agrees and says that Google, like Microsoft before it, should be wary of antitrust concerns, because so many Web publishers now depend on the traffic the search giant sends their way. The addition of Knol raises more red flags, because Google will be sending traffic to its own Web site. How much will Google tweak its search algorithm to favor Knol content versus Wikipedia? "This is where Google could be crossing the line," Lunn says. "This is not so far from Microsoft bundling Explorer in order to beat Netscape."

Meanwhile, the emergence of Knol could signal the end of the line for the likes of Squidoo and Calacanis' Mahalo. These "semi-automated aggregation plays" will be in Knol's way. "They had better be really agile to get out of the way," Lunn says. "They look like roadkill to me."

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