Google's answer to Wikipedia

Google released its own version of a free online encyclopedia. Currently, Wikipedia is the undisputed leader in collaboratively edited content, with 2,400,000 articles in the largest English edition, and scoring tens of millions unique visitors every month. Google's Knol will rely on experts in specific fields to edit articles, rather than open the process to the anonymous wide public.

"A knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic," tells us the newly launched website. It already features articles on a number of topics, as well as a guideline for authors. The first thing that makes an impression is that every article has the prominent name and photo of an expert, who verified the information. The [edit] links, present next to every section in a wiki article, are missing.

One thing that Wikipedia needs is a "Do you mean" helper like the one that appears when you misspell a word in Google search. This doesn't seem to be implemented in Knol, yet, but it is often helpful when researching things. The credibility of articles verified by experts, and possibly several advanced functionalities like the one mentioned above, could give Knol an edge over Wikipedia. But the tens of millions of articles in dozens of languages, and the high visibility of the Wikipedia brand will be very hard to beat, even for Google.