From the looks of this Google Blog entry it looks as though Google is writing their very own Wikipedia which they can index and put up as the first match for any topic, something that Wikipedia ends up doing most of the time right now. I would say that Google’s Knol is simply re-inventing the wheel, but having played with wikis, I know things like the commenting structure of talk pages needs a Google-ized approach to add something like Gmail’s or Groups conversations to the setup. They also indicate that they want to highlight the authors more, which is pretty cool, but once many people are adding articles to Google Knol then who’s the author in the end?

The Google Knol sounds like it may just be a whole lot of wheel invention. Google should look at creating a partnership with Wikipedia for this project and add what they need to to the Mediawiki interface which would allow everyone access to their properly indexable formatting with easy editing. But alas, sometimes in this world the wheel needs to be re-invented. Just look at OpenMoKo’s Neo1973, they’re taking the cell phone back to it’s creation time and re-inventing it with an open kernel so that developers can write anything they want. Given time, this project will be much more interesting than Google’s Android as it’s less locked up and doing things like making calls from Wifi and cellular on the same device will be possible. With the cult-like following of their project, it’s going to be huge once the devices are able to manage their power and handle calls properly which they say is very soon.