Google, Inc. announced Thursday that it is working on a collaborative online encyclopedia that could compete with Wikipedia, the popular user-edited encyclopedia.

The "knol" project – named for Google's shorthand for a unit of knowledge – will allow a user to create an entry on virtually any topic. Like Wikipedia, it will allow anyone to add an entry, but unlike the largely anonymous Wikipedia, it will post an author's byline and profile with each entry.

"The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors," writes Google's Udi Manber on the company's official blog:

"Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors – but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content."

To give a better sense of what a knol will look like, Manber posted a screenshot of a sample knol: an entry on insomnia written by one Rachel Manber, an expert on sleep disorders at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Another difference with Wikipedia is that readers will not be able to edit knol entries. But they will be able to rank them, and these rankings will be interpreted by Google's search engine when displaying results. Udi Manber says he expects to see competing entries on the same topic. "Competition of ideas is a good thing," he writes.

But knol authors could be competing for more than just search-engine ranking: Manber writes that author can choose to have advertising on their entries. He writes that Google will offer "a substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads." Wikipedia, by contrast, is run by a nonprofit foundation and edited entirely by unpaid volunteers.

The project is still in its beta phase and is working with writers on an invitation-only basis. Still, it has prompted speculation that this project is taking Google in a fundamentally new direction.

"Up to now, Google has won because it is the best way to navigate *other* people's information on the net," writes blogger Hugh McGuire on the Huffington Post. "Knol is a whole other level: Google becomes the producer of information." [Emphasis in original.]

McGuire describes what he sees as a "conflict of interest" in Google's dual role as a search engine and content producer, and he suspects that Google will favor its own content over other sites in its search results.

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