Liberal Education Today

Google is piloting a new service for collaborative knowledge development. A "knol", whose name refers to "unit of knowledge," is a single Web page, supported by Google, authored by an expert, and open to all readers. Knols may becomes the first response in appropriate Google searches, which should grow attention very rapidly.

knol may represent a second attempt on the human answers field from the search and service giant, after Google closed down Google Answers last year. This may mean competition with Yahoo! Answers (launched 2005), Mahalo, Squidoo, and other social search/answer services, not to mention About.com.

Google's knol may also represent competition with Wikipedia, whose entries currently rank very highly in some search results. The single author feature also suggests Citizendium, another project competing with Wikipedia. Highlighting authors may prove attractive to faculty and librarians worried about the relative anonymity of Wikipedia sources (per the Google blog entry: "We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content").

(sample from Googleblog)

Google blogs that it will not regulate knol content, which should play a powerful role in shaping community involvement and collaboration.

Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write.

(emphasis in original)

knols might be published under a Creative Commons license, if the one appearing on the sample image is any indication.

On a broader level, knol might represent Google moving more strongly into supporting content creation.

The knol service is in a private, closed beta at the moment.