I hadn't heard that Google's main reason for Google Knol was to knock off or copy Squidoo, though Seth Godin, who was recently at the GooglePlex, talking about building a dependable platform is needed for business success, seems to think so.

"….Apparently, the best thing that can happen to you if you pick Google as a platform is that they mimic you. "

"….Anyway, I got back from my trip to Google and crunched some numbers and posted this good news about Squidoo. We’ve hit profitability, grown to be three to five times as big as others in our space and reached more than 125,000 users. A good day.

The very next day, Google announced Knol, a direct lift from Squidoo circa 2005. Apparently, Google wants to be in our business. It’s almost enough to ruin your day.

Then, a funny thing happened: I started getting notes of congratulations. Of all the business models and all the internet ideas to jump on, Google had chosen ours. There were hundreds of neat ideas out there, but they picked ours."

I guess my mind was just poisoned again, from Jason Calacanis - Mahalo - Internet pollution and how to stop it, who spoke at LeWeb3, where I was, of how he might not be Seth's friend any longer because Seth Godin can't police the platform he created (and earlier this year Jason was calling Seth Godin a "Sith Lord" for creating Squidoo without the proper policing policies in the first place).

"..Today, Jason Calacanis is on a rant about spam, search spam in particular.  Jason blames part of the problem of spam on Investors who are enabling situations where bad behavior is rewarded.   Jason thinks we need to build curator ship into services that are being launched, and once a service is launched, it needs to be policed.  Jason Calacanis cites Seth Godin, someone he's been friends with for 10 years, as someone who had a good idea with Squido, but it's become full of spam.

Jason Calacanis is launching the ability to create a profile on Mahalo where the links are submitted and rated by real people.  Jason thinks that it's going to take a long time to build a search engine based on human ratings, but it's worth it."

But it doesn't seem that Google's copying Mahalo yet…. so maybe Seth Godin is right, and Google thinks there is a business model  here.

Honestly, I don't know what to believe - Jimmy Whales doesn't think Google Knol is a threat to Wikipedia - Knol Vs. Wikipedia - Jimmy - Jimbo Wales Responds and I haven't really seen Knol in action yet, either.  In fact, it was kinda hard to keep track of everything as I was on my way back from  Paris when the Google made the announcement about Knol.

But then, there's usually some announcement coming about Google on a weekly basis - some new launch - and usually, lately, it's copying or imitating someone else's product or business model, with the idea of doing it better and putting what's being imitated out of business.

Which reminds me - that perhaps the single thing that categorizes Google now is their belief that they can do anything they choose, better than anyone else.