Google's Knols

Google has announced a "new, free tool that we are calling "knol", which stands for a unit of knowledge." Currently invitation-only, it sounds like a direct challenge to Wikipedia: "A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read."

With perhaps a key difference:

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content.

Which in addition to all the "comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on" others can add, means that "a knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads."

Can't wait to see this rolled out.