Google Responding to Wikipedia?

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Google Responding to Wikipedia?
I think there's something really weird about Google's launching of the 'knol' (one unit of knowledge). On the one hand, it resembles a learning object in its granularity. But so does a Wikipedia article - and maybe, as George Siemens suggests, Google is afraid of Wikipedia. Because Google also attributes each 'knol' to a specific author. A lot like Citizendium. Well it's going to be a bit hard for the fameseekers to resist this one. But more to the point, it's surprising to see Google ignoring the lesson that created its huge empire in the first places: that many voices, not one expert voice, constitute authority. More...