Google Knol is a modern day way to create your own web space. Although you do not own the website itself, but you will have your own space inside Knol where you can publish your articles.

We all are familiar with internet encyclopedia called "Wikipedia". Wikipedia has almost one page on every topic and anyone can modify that article to make it more informative. New topics/pages can also be created quite easily. The biggest drawback of wikipedia is lack of personal identity. No one owns an article, anyone can come and modify that again.

Google Knol is a totally different concept. Each author can create his own article on any topic. The article is published on the authors name and other people can only suggest improvements to it. There can be many pages on a topic, each owned by different authors. For example on Wikipedia there will be only one page on "Skin Cancer" while on Google Knol there will be several independent articles on "Skin Cancer", each owned by different authors.

There has been a lot of controversy that authors from Knol are writing articles by copying content from Wikipedia even though it's against the policy of Knol. Google Knol also allows authors to display Google Ads on their articles, which can help authors to make some money for their work. Only very good knols make money, others generate rather insignificant revenue. This is a great option for non-techies.

Bottomline, Knol is a very easy way to publish articles and have your own web space, but if you want to create a true website of your own (your domain, hosting etc..) then I recommend services like Godaddy.