WHAT IS KNOL?

Knol is a Google project which aims to include user-written articles on a range of topics The project was led by Udi Manber of Google, it was announced on December 13, 2007 and was opened in beta to the public on July 23, 2008 with a few hundred articles mostly in the health and medical field. On January 16, 2009, Google announced that Knol had grown to 100,000 articles, and users from 197 countries and territories visit Knol on an average day.

Knol pages are "meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read", according to Manber. The term knol, which Google defines as a "unit of knowledge", refers to both the project and an article in the project. Several experts see Knol as Google's attempt to compete with Wikipedia, while others point out the differences between the projects.

Any contributors can create (and own) new knols, and there can be multiple articles on the same topic, each written by a different author. Because multiple articles can have the same title, readers find a topic by searching, rather than just by title. The authors have an option to allow their knols to be edited by the public, to make them editable only to co-authors or to make them closed entirely. They may also choose to include ads from Google's AdSense to their knols.

Knol has a content policy describing topics unacceptable for the project. Relevant nudity is allowed (in most countries), but pornography, commercial or otherwise, is forbidden. Also forbidden is discriminatory or violent content. Content designed to promote businesses, products or services is allowed, but articles devoid of substantive content and created solely to generate ad revenue are not.