The "computational knowledge engine", as the technology is known, will be available to the public from the middle of May this year.

BBC: Web tool 'as important as Google'

Any European limits on Google could hamper the sweeping ambition that chief executive Larry Page has set for the company to turn itself from a search engine that primarily displays links to other sites into a "knowledge engine" that answers users' questions directly with information plucked from Google's own services.

CNN: Brussels takes tough stance on Google

The result is a profound imbalance in the global production of knowledge: probably the most powerful engine of divergence in global well-being between the rich and the poor.

ECONOMIST: BY INVITATION: Helping the world’s poorest | The

And yet to define the university as the engine room of the knowledge economy also imposes complex new demands on an institution already struggling to reconcile its ancient tradition with the demands of mass higher education.

ECONOMIST: The knowledge factory