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The site allows anyone to write a knol - a unit of knowledge - on the subject of their choosing. Users can write knols on subjects that have already been written about by other users (potentially leading to mass duplication) and retain complete editorial rights over their submissions.

"The key principle behind Knol is authorship," write Google's Cedric Dupont and Michael McNally on the Google blog. "Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. 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."

Other users can make

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suggestions about how a particular knol should be edited, but unlike Wikipedia, the author of the article retains complete editorial control. "With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call 'moderated collaboration'," the Google team writes. "With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public.

"This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content. After all, their name is associated with it."

The majority of the knols already submitted to the Knol site appear to focus on medical conditions, such as Parkinson's disease and various forms of cancer.

Among the more obscure entries is an article on Toilet Clogs, which includes a rather bizarre illustration of how to remove crayons from the U-bend. Interestingly, the article comes from The Family Handyman Magazine, suggesting that Knol could be used a marketing tool for commercial publishers - a practice frowned upon at rival Wikipedia.