Very interesting. By highlighting the author of an article, or "knol", there's a clear and compelling reason to contribute articles of value. Google's internal Knol likely creates a meritocracy, where it's important and valuable to be the person who wrote the authoritative knol on a specific technical topic.

Compared with Wikipedia, where most contributions are fueled by a altruistic need to create or improve articles, I can see the motives for this, but it also seems as though this would create lots of stale pages, jockeying for 'authoritative' position, and generally stifle collaboration.

Interesting - but I don't think it's a wikipedia killer.