While the beta testing seems never to end at Google — Gmail is still in beta well past age 4 — the world’s largest search engine and advertising machine has released to the public a new knowledge base called “Knol.” A “knol,” according to Google, is a unit of knowledge. More specifically, Google says Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. The company first announced Knol late last year, and instead of populating its databases with articles from everyone, Google kept Knol an invitation-only party — until now.
