I came across this entry earlier today, which led me through to Google's blog. If you want to know the specifics, I suggest visiting Google's blog, but a quick screenshot of the interface is here. 

A notable quote on the blog was "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."

This kind of sent silent chills down my back. It's bad enough we have been silently been battling Wikipedia and other knowledge sites--are we going to have to compete with Knol results, too? And how will it work? What does it mean for SEOs? To be honest, I don't have answers to those questions, but it seems there are others who already do.

Danny Sullivan raises concerns over the potential spamming and abuse of the system, as well as the question "But does hosting content turn it into a competitor with other content providers and set up an unfair advantage in gaining traffic that might otherwise flow to them?" He also points out that "Knol pages might get an unfair advantage."

Duncan Reily is running a poll over at TechCrunch to see whether people feel that Google is taking a step too far. A particularly good comment by Paul Short highlights:

"Is anyone else seeing a shift in the way Google is doing things? I’m seeing a company whose core product relied on aggregating and sifting content from other sites, to a move to them building (or buying) content (or the underlying technology) that they have ultimate control over."

Seth Godin (Squidoo) adds his thoughts to the meley and I particularly admire his stand - imitation is the best form of flattery.

Don't forget Aaron Wall of SEObook fame, and although he brings similar views to Danny to the table, he adds "How can Google come late to the game, offer no pay, desire to throw their ads on it right out of the gate, and expect to win marketshare UNLESS they rank this content better than it deserves to rank on merit?" He brings Google's strategy into question, by proposing "...if Google gets too aggressive with this cross integration maybe they will hurt their relevancy enough that people search elsewhere."

There are people already targeting the phrase as a keyword, and it's kind of scary how many domain names have already been registered... In fact, the same enterprising individual has already started a Knol Facebook group...

But fear not - the marketing gurus are already finding ways that Google Knol can be used in your favour; for example, Matt Mcgee offers 7 ways to use it, which, in my opinion, is a great way to pre-empt your brand's online reputation within Knol. I would advise building this strategy within your contingency in your plans.

I guess there are always options available to take advantage of and monetise anything new on the web at any given point, but sometimes the sheer breadth of the domination Google is attempting all the time scares me.