Sometimes, even a smart company can make mistakes.
Late last year, Google announced its own user-generated, peer-reviewed encyclopedia: Knol. Positioned to challenge the incumbent Wikipedia, Knol is pitched to have a better model in which authors are more rewarded, both with recognition and revenue share. It’s another initiative taken by Google that is in line with its long term strategy to move from “sending away people to other destinations” to “becoming the destination itself”. Google is the net.
It seems to be a sound model. People would be more interested to contribute if they also get something in return. The problem is, Google doesn’t have the domain name: www.knol.com. It is owned by a Dutch company and has even been developed into a decent website. At the moment, knol can only be accessed through this lengthy sub-domain url: knol.google.com.
It’s obvious that many people will intuitively go to knol.com instead of knol.google.com when trying to reach the website. My quick checking on compete.com shows a huge traffic spike– up to 25.000+ visitors– following Google’s announcement in December 2007. If Knol grows as big as Wikipedia, incidental type-in traffic to Knol.com is surely bound to increase significantly, may range in hundreds of thousands if not millions per month.
To secure traffic and prevent confusion, Google has no option but to buy the domain. And it is exactly what they are trying to do right now. According to domainnews.com, Google is interested in purchasing the domain and has reportedly offered “a sum of five zeros”. The owner balked at the offer and would only consider “a six zero sum”. (Oh yeah…. not in dollar, but in euro, please 
).
I don’t quite understand. Google must have anticipated it when they chose a name they don’t own. Why didn’t the smart Google try to buy the domain privately (and anonymously, if possible) before launching and announcing Knol? It would have been much cheaper then, and if for whatever reason the owner refused to sell, Google would still have alternative names open.
Of course, Google can afford to spend six figures to get the domain, but it is shareholders’ money that could otherwise be spent elsewhere more productively.