Knol: Google's new knowledge repository

Pandia Search Engine news has a story about a new project from Google called Knol. From the description it sounds like an encyclopedia. Google says in a blogpost about Knol: " Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it." A knol is defined as a unit of knowledge, and Google says that the key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors (in contrast, presumably, to Wikipedia). Google also says "A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read." (look out Wikipedia). Google invites select people to become involved in the project and write the articles; it doesn't say how it chooses the writers to invite. SearchEngineLand also has an article about Knol including screenshots of what a Knol page will look like.