Google Announces Knols

Google announced a new tool that will allow individuals to showcase their expertise. The tool is code named "knol" for "a unit of knowledge," and it will allow users to create Google-hosted Web pages on particular topics. Here's an example page.

Users can voluntarily host ads on their knols, and Google will share some of the revenue, just like they do with Blogger and other Google hosted services. From the description, it sounds a lot like this is meant to be a Wikipedia alternative with a dash of Associated Content thrown in. I also wonder if this isn't at least partially what happened to JotSpot.

I had to laugh when I read that Google didn't intend it to be a "walled garden of content," so the pages would be open to other search engines. Of course it will be! Google will make money on the advertisements, no matter which search engine found the page.

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