Google Takes On Wikipedia With New Ad-Bearing ‘Knol’ Pages, What About Google Base?

+ Google Takes On Wikipedia With New Ad-Bearing ‘Knol’ Pages (via Dow Jones)
A few quick notes for info pros to remember:
1) Don’t forget about Citizendium, a project from a co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger.
2) It’s one thing to post “knowledge” but it’s something else to keep it current, make changes, update, etc. Outdated info can be a real issue in the long haul.
2) We were surprised not to see any mention of Yahoo Answers in this article. It has been successful in terms of users but this week a Slate article called it, “A Librarian’s Worst Nightmare: Yahoo! Answers, where 120 million users can be wrong.”
3) Where does librarian powered virtual reference (OCLC, for example) fit in and what about services like Cha Cha that came online after Google Answers was taken down. In other words, how many of these services will people participate in?
4) Wasn’t Google Base suppose to be the place where anyone could contribute and organize knowledge, product info, etc. and and also (the hard part) organize it. Google would crawl and make accessible. From recipes to directions to movie reviews to personal profiles? Base has taken on a much more commercial tone with product listings.
From the October, 2007 news release:

Similar to a database, Google Base enables content owners to describe and assign attributes to the information they upload and uses this meta-data to better target search results to what users are looking for. For example, if a chef chooses to upload their very best recipe for tamales he/she can further describe that recipe with a photo or by assigning attributes such as “medium-spicy” or “spicy.” When a user searches for the word [tamale recipes] from the Google Base homepage they will be presented with a list of recipe results accompanied by a list attributes at the top of page which enable them to further refine their search to “medium-spicy” or “hot” tamale recipes.