Google are increasingly pushing their products and services to pretty much everyone and Google properties like books, knols and news are starting to dominate the search results. It doesn’t have to be that way - you can actually get:
A nifty application that filters out Google’s own results. Find it here and enjoy search again 
Google Knol has just been opened to the public after being in Beta for some time. The idea is part Wikipedia, part Squidoo and part About.com, with ‘experts’ writing detailed articles on specific subjects, from their own point of view.
At the moment Knols have mainly been written by healthcare professionals - a glance at the front page selection shows the narrow range quite clearly:
Google states that Knols will appear in the search results, just like any other website. I’m reminded of Google Books, which appear for many search results regardless of whether you want a book. Presumably soon Knols will be appearing near (above?) similar Wikipedia entries.
MSN used to be the worst culprit for trying to keep you on their own network but it seems Google is going the same way. I’m all for healthy competition but when Google have such a monopoly on search they could quite easily rank their own domains before, well, real websites.