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Google might have a lot for its users and by lot we point at quality of service that its product provide but at times it just gets overboard and Knol is one of them. Though it hasn’t been long since the service was launched but bloggers haven’t welcomed it with much praise, calling it a Wikipedia twin.

The articles at Knol, like those at Wikipedia, are user submitted but it appears Knol has come out with something that Wikipedia hasn’t. Knol can speak what articles you. Knol talks about the feature on its help page:

We are experimenting with Audio Playback as an option for some Knols, starting with a handful of English language featured Knols. If this experiment is successful, we may make Audio Playback available to more Knols in additional languages, and additional features.

The feature is definitely helpful and at least makes one think that Knol is not entirely Wikipedia with a different name. But there are certain shortcomings to it, especially that it doesn’t really differentiate between paragraphs and more or less appears to just speed away with reading. But then it’s just an experimental feature and with time may very well improve. The good thing about this is also the ability to download the audio as an MP3 file, just in case one want to hear all the information offline instead of reading it.