Google has embarked upon yet another facet of the Web: the encyclopedia.
Google's service, dubbed "knol," has been widely viewed as the company's answer to Wikipedia, which has emerged as one of the Web's leading reference tools by drawing upon the knowledge of anonymous contributors.
But it's Wikipedia's credibility and anonymity issues that pose problems.
Anyone with a Google login name will be able to submit an article. The service, dubbed "knol" in reference to a unit of knowledge, had been limited to an invitation-only audience of contributors and readers for the past seven months.
Knol currently has several hundred articles, including an overview of constipation by a University of San Francisco associate professor of gastroenterology and backpacking advice from one of Google's own software engineers.
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