Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Grzegorz Lepiarz

After months of private testing, Google has finally made its Wikipedia competitor, Knol, available to the public. Now, users can post articles and even receive compensation based on ad clicks.

eSchoolNews reports:

"The service, dubbed "knol" in reference to a unit of knowledge, had been limited to an invitation-only audience of contributors and readers for the past seven months.

Now anyone with a Google login will be able to submit an article and, if they choose, have ads displayed through the internet search leader's marketing system. The contributing author and Google will share any revenue generated from the ads, which are supposed to be related to the topic covered in the knol."

Knol articles are not anonymous and are not open to instant user edits. It will be interesting to see how this site develops as a resource for online students.