Knols fizzled?

Only if your expectations were unreasonably high.

Electronic publishing (any sort of writing that never gets printed on paper) is happening in too many ways to count. It's inconceivable that anyone can corner the market on this stuff.

The only people who seem to react negatively to every new development are those who have no understanding of the technology they criticize.

I advise them to stock up on toner cartridges so that they can print out everything they see for archival purposes. They might also invest in nitrogen filled storage containers or transcribe all the material onto clay tablets.

Who knows, some archeologist in a million years might thank them.

PS: be sure to put the clay tablets in waterproof jars.

This is a huge deal. They have taken unoriginal content that is all over the place and put it at the top of their results. Why? – to promote google health. They have taken traffic away from sites that have much better content and is original. If they can do it in health, any content is fair game.