Google is introduced a new service Knol like Wikipedia. But there are some feature differences with Knol and Wikipedia.
1. You can use your AdSense with Knol
2. There may be multiple pages per topic (multiple authors can add multiple pages for a single topic).
3. You can promote your business or products using Knol
4. Users can add comments
5. You can have 3 kinds of licenses for an article
a. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
b. Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License
c. All Rights Reserved.
6. You can restrict the users from editing your article, there are also 3 options
a. Open collaboration model - All signed in users may edit the knol
b. Moderated collaboration model - All signed in users can suggest edits to the knol, but these need approval from an author before being published
c. Closed collaboration model - Only owners and authors may edit the knol
all these things are not available in Wikipedia.
So if you want to verify your account you will have to provide Telephone number or Credit card number (You are not required to use Name Verification to use Knol). After the verification process is complete, your name will be displayed as verified on Knol
Read a quick start guide from Digital Inspiration