In a not very innovative move Google is going to try to copy Wikipedia's shtick with a soup-to-nuts, online, user-generated encyclopedia of all human knowledge dubbed Knol that's currently being beta tested by a reportedly small group of invitees.

Contributors, who are supposed to sign their pieces, not be anonymous like Wikipedia - a good thing - will be able to monetize their individually written, Creative Commons-licensed articles with ads, sharing the revenues with Google.

Google will provide the tools and rank entries. Fact checking will supposedly be left to the readers - (who will go to the library and look things up in a book?).

Wikipedia currently has 8.2 million articles written in 200 languages.

Tit for tat, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been working on a for-profit Wikia search engine due out any minute now.

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