Liberal Education Today

Google formally launched its Knol service this week, a platform for users to publish and share knowledge, especially domain experts. Anyone with a Google account is invited to create a Knol page about topics they know something about. Multiple knols can be created about the same topic; their relative value is to be determined by search engine result ranking. Knols can be rated and/or commented on, if the author allows. Knols may be searched from the Knol front page, or by Web search engines.

Content within a knol must adhere to the platform's terms of service, along with its content policy. Knol authors may also connect with Google's AdWords business. Several hundred knols are already available, according to Wired. Knol authors can select different intellectual property levels, from traditional copyright to two Creative Commons licenses.

Screenshot from a sample knol, on medical information technology:

Knol competes potentially with several other projects. Wikipedia is the most evident competitor. One clear difference with the open-source encyclopedia is that knols are to have clear authorship:

authors of the knols can take credit for their writing, provide credentials, and elicit peer reviews and comments...
The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It's their knol, their voice, their opinion

One informed critic focuses on the mix of Knol authorship, policy, and ranking, to dub it "Wikipedia with moderation."
However, the lead Knol engineer sees no competition, and Wikipdia's leader, Jimbo Wales, is skeptical:

"What is the added value?" Wales asks. "People already can put up web pages somewhere on the internet, put some ads on it if they want to get revenue or not put ads if they don't want the revenue." (full Wired article here)

There is already a Wikipedia entry about Knol, but no Knol about Wikipedia, yet(via MetaFilter).
The project lead for Citizendium, Larry Sanger, sees Knol as another competitor to that project (previous Liberal Education Today posts on Citizendium).

For academic purposes, Knol could appeal to faculty and staff who dislike or want to see new alternatives to Wikipedia. Knol could also appeal to campus populations already engaged with Google services. At the same time, Knol could be seen as problematic, under the criticisms mounted by other Google skeptics: data owned by a private company, or seen as part of an emergent monopoly.

Google announced Knol last year (Liberal Education Today post), and apparently piloted it quietly over the past few months.