Utkarshraj Atmaram wrote:
"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."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html
I predict that some enterprising souls will quickly "create" knols by using GFDL text from Wikipedia, thus getting paid for the work of others. After that, other writers will take the same text and modify it to improve its popularity, creating dozens of variations on the same text.
Will