Will the Google Knol Bring Down Wiki?

Google, rather than crushing Wiki, thinks they can compete with their own KNOL (Knowledge) encyclopedia (Google Know Article)

Wow, this might attract the folks who now contribute to wikipedia. They can be paid for their writing. Looks like competition for the content sites.

The BBC's take on it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7144970.stm

Wonder if us guys will be able to gain anything if this happens

And wasn't Wikipedia talking about entering the search engine industry?

Why don't Google and Wikipedia just...merge?

I thought google have already buy the wikipedia... correct me guys if im wrong...

I think Google's approach of hiring professional users is going to give it more credibility. But this will slow down the number of articles it can have. Especially compared to wikipedia's already mass arsenal of information. Let's not even go into the brand wikipedia and how strongly it's identified with informational compared to "knol".

Thank You

I wouldnt necessarily call them proffesional users, wiki is the simplest viral network known to man and it pulls serious traffic, them paying people to contribute is not a new technique, Calacanis's Mahalo.com , same deal paying people to make results, basically by them paying peeps they take everyone from wiki and get their own wiki built for a low price that will no matter pay off in a year or 2 or once a large database of content is built. If you have money like google, you can do whatever you want or set your eyes on becuase they can look at everything ridiculously long term and dont need to make a profit off of it for quite sometime unlike most internet companies.

Well I think Google has been a star performer in all respects. I am not sure if it is going to happen but I am pretty sure about the fact that Google will outbeat Wiki

guys,, check out the screenshot of google knol http://www.google.com/help/knol_screenshot.html