Google's Knol & Wikia Search

I recently posted here about Google's Knol and how I felt it was not the best idea. A couple of days ago a colleague mentioned he thought it could be a good thing for various reasons. I had considered the reasons he mentioned such as authorship making the posts more credible (though my understanding was that Google would not be verifying the authorship) and that Google competing with Wikipedia could make them both better, etc. I've also been following Wikia Search which just launched today. Check out this New York Times article on Wikia. As my colleague was talking to me about Knol's positive attributes, I mentioned that I just didn't see why Google had to be competing with Wikipedia. And now Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia's co-founder) is going after Google with his own search engine, and I don't like that.
Then I realized something - I love most things Google, and I am a big fan of Wikipedia and Jimmy Wales. I don't like how this competition between the two feels. I would like to see Google and Wikipedia collaborating on an amazing project rather than competing with each other. Oh well, I'm a child of divorce, maybe that's it.

Google's Knol - Good/Bad Idea?

When Google introduced Knol this last week, I was perplexed. I could not figure out why Google would want to compete in this way with Wikipedia or Citizendium. I wasn't going to even post on this, but something I saw in this Chronicle's Wired campus blog post "Can Google's New Open Encyclopedia Best Wikipedia?" caught my eye and I began to think Google's Knol could have a chance. The key factor in Google's favor is that Knol authors stand to make money for their efforts. But I still do not think this Google project will succeed.
Now I love most all things Google, but I would personally rather see Google focus on more innovative endeavors of its own rather than looking at ways it can add revenue by tweaking successful Web 2.0 products like Wikipedia and calling it their own.