Search giant Google stands to gain another profitable avenue of ad income through a new creation they are dubbing “knol.” Knol is basically a version of Wikipedia – a community-created online encyclopedia. Udi Manber, vice president of engineering, announced on Google’s website that certain people were being invited to test the service for free as of last month.

Of the request Manber stated, “Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it.”

Even though knoll is similar to Wikipedia, there are some differences. For instance, Google will have whole articles with author names and pictures while Wikipedia allows anyone to make changes to entries. Manber said, “We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. 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.”

Another difference with be that knols about the same topic will remain independent and have the ability to compete for visitor attention. Wikipedia merges similar topics into one entry. Knol authors will also be allowed to have ads posted on their pages and share in the revenue.

Google did say they hope for knols on all sorts of subjects and that they do not plan to edit or endorse content. This means Google will take none of the editorial responsibility; it is the author’s alone.