Google's Vice President of Engineering, Udi Manber, has announced on an official company blog that his company is developing a Wikipedia-killer. Google has thought out a different approach than that of the leading online encyclopedia.

Manber says that each article, nicknamed "knol", will be written by a single author who will have entire control over it. However, different knols on the same subject will coexist, with a complex ranking system which will give prevalence of those considered more relevant.

"The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content," Manber says.

Also, authors will be able to enable or disable ads showing up on their knols. However, if they choose to enable advertising, Google will share a significant portion of the revenue they produce with the author. "Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors," Google's chief algorithm designer says.

The rating system will apparently use both Google's automatic algorithms and a complex user-powered rating system. Anyone will be able to contribute, probably if their content is in conformity with certain guidelines.

The search engine leader has posted a screenshot of an early-stage version of the website, which showcases a knol on insomnia.

Udi Manber was chief scientist at Yahoo! in 1998, then chief algorithms officer and vice president at Amazon.com. He was hired by Google in early 2006 where he took on the job of overseeing core search. He was also a professor at the University of Arizona where he taught algorithms.

For further details read the full post by Udi Manber on Google's blog.