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It seems that Google didn't miss Knol by accident when the company was killing Dodgeball, Jaiku, and other services two weeks ago.  Matt Cutts has stepped forward to defend the would-be Wikipedia competitor, and a new contest aims to spark a bit of interest in it.

Cutts started by bringing up the 100,000-article mark that Knol recently hit.  He noted on his blog that, even if the number sounds insignificant next to Wikipedia's 2.7 million pages, "Mashable made a point that 'it took Wikipedia almost two years to reach a similar number of pages.'"

 

Cutts then continued, "Some of the ways I've learned to estimate whether a team will be successful is how high-impact their project is, but also 1) how quickly they can iterate and 2) how they react to feedback.  I consider the Google Chrome team very successful . . . .  They roll out a new version of Chrome about once a week, and I see them pay attention and prioritize based on feedback. . . .  Knol has more polish, more features, and the team has listened to the outside world when they plan what to work on next."

If you're interested in giving Knol another chance, then, Google and the site tied to the "For Dummies" book line have arranged a little incentive.  Five people who enter the Knol for Dummies contest will have their entries featured on Dummies.com, while one grand prize winner will get $1,000.  All that's required of participants is that they submit typical Knol how-to articles before March 23rd.

It should be interesting to see what Knol's article count looks like when the promotion is done.