Google Knol

Google will soon start a new service called knol. It is like Wikipedia. The Author is highlighted, no other users can edit, and the author gets an advertising revenue share. This way Google moves more into the market for being the 'owner' of content, besides only being a search engine.

Google Knol - Google Blog

"The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors."

"...somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted."

Knol - the goal
"The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions."

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to...

Knol - Wikipedia

Knol - the term
"The term knol, which stands for a "unit of knowledge", refers to both the project and an instance of article in the project."

"Knol has been described as a rival to both Wikipedia and About.com."

Knol is not a wiki
"In contrast to Wikipedia, where articles are written collectively, each article in knol will be written by a single author and cannot be edited by others."

In the Google Blog announcement, they write that other user can submit edits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol

Google Knol - Screenshot

As a preview, Google shows a preliminary screenshot of a knol page
http://www.google.com/help/knol_screenshot.html