Share your knol with the world, with Google Knol

Google just announced their newest service tonight that gives users an easy way to share their knowledge -- Google Knol. The service is still in testing and accessible by invitation only, but it looks pretty interesting. You can almost guarantee that information written inside of knol's will find their way to the top, or at least scattered throughout, search engine result pages.

Not only that, but authors of these articles can expect to make a healthy chunk of revenue generated through the ads that appear next to the content. It's hard to say if this will take off, or if it will provide any real competition for Wikipedia, but it definitely seems to be poised to step on a few toes.

Take this sample article on insomnia for instance -- I can see this being a very useful piece of information for many people. I can't wait to see if this actually takes off and becomes the standard for sharing and finding real, and useful information -- it won't be easy, but I think it's possible. Wikipedia has enjoyed much success, and a loyal base of users, but there is no way for the authors of those articles to be compensated like what Google is proposing. Will deep pockets prevail?