Google Knol - Hub Pages meets Wiki?

Google have launched yet another new web 2.0 site: Google Knol

Knol has been operating on a trial basis with a company-selected, invite-only group of authors since December 2007 and, in my opinion, it's something of a hybrid between Hub Pages and  Wiki as there's some in-built collaboration.

Unlike Wikipedia, people who write entries on Google Knol are identified and may earn a profit from their articles with adverts. The views the article gets, the more an author can get paid. Google, of course, gets a share of the profits.

Said a Google spokesperson: "The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content," the company wrote on its blog Wednesday. "It's their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good."

"Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it," the company wrote on its blog in December. "We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of Web content."

Get over there now and have a play, Google Knol is likely to grow in popularity and it will be a great place to have a presence.