RSSGoogle Closes Down 'Answers' Service
By Nate Mook | Published November 29, 2006, 2:32 PM
Later this week, Google will stop accepting new questions on its Answers service, one of many search-related products the company has rolled out over the years. Google says that part of being an innovator means "reconsidering our goals."
Google Answers provided a way for users to pose questions and set a price for how much the answer would be worth to them. Others from around the world could then answer the question, and receive payment, with Google taking 50 cents as a listing fee.
The search giant says over 800 individuals participated in the service, but it's audience was quite niche and Google Answers failed to achieve mainstream adoption in the more-than four years it has been around.
"The project started with a rough idea from Larry Page, and a small 4-person team turned it into reality in less than 4 months," Google developers Andrew Fikes and Lexi Baugher wrote on the company's blog. "For two new grads, it was a crash course in building a scalable product, responding to customer requests, and discovering what questions are on people's minds."
Despite its moderate success, Google Answers did catch the eye of the company's competitors. Yahoo launched its own Q and A service last year, which has proven to be quite popular. Yahoo took a different approach, however, dropping the fees and relying on users to answer questions out of goodwill, much like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
In September, Microsoft took the wraps off Windows Live QnA, a service similar to Yahoo's that utilizes a reputation based system. Users vote for the best answers and after four days, the question and answer get locked down for future reference.
Although it ceasing to accept new questions this week and will stop accepting new answers by the end of the year, Google says it will leave existing Q and A's available for perusal.
"Google Answers was a great experiment which provided us with a lot of material for developing future products to serve our users. We'll continue to look for new ways to improve the search experience and to connect people to the information they want," added Fikes and Baugher.
I think it is kinda lame to try to capitalize on people helping people with basic information and the like.
The spirit of the internet from a user perspective at least used to be about helping without ulterior motive. Sharing basic information freely with kind of a "pay it forward" attitude, that if you help, others will help when they can and so forth.
I like google, but I kinda wish they would help promote Google Groups and Usenet as more of an information resource. There are so many knowledgeable people on Usenet, and back when it was DejaNews, it was an excellent resource. I'd like to see that continue, especially since some people do not like using forums and be under the thumb of moderators and the like.
Score: 0
Too much competition for them is more like it. Yahoo has Yahoo answers and MSN is even working on a Q&A service.
Score: 0
In response to Google's announcement that they are shutting down the Google Answers service, researchers have banded together to petition Google to keep GA alive. Please sign.
http://www.petitiononline.com/ganswers/
Keep Google Answers Alive
To: Google
The Google Answers service has helped many people during its four and a half years of existence, and it continues to do so. Researchers and unpaid commenters formed a community which should not be discarded lightly. Many repeat users were able to easily find answers to difficult questions thanks to the service. Furthermore, Google Answers proved that a living could be made working on the Internet alone, as many researchers worked on the site as their sole source of income.
We, the undersigned, believe that Google should continue to provide this valuable community service to the Internet.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
Score: 0
"Google says that part of being an innovator means "reconsidering our goals.""
Yes, especially since their prior goals have done so well--obviously, they need to take a complete 180 degree turn so that they instantly lose billions of USD in profit...
...and regarding the start page, absolutely! Google's page is good because even a dial-up pc doesn't take more than a few seconds to load it--that's the whole reason I started using google in the first place! MSN and Yahoo's pages took ages for my poor 56k modem to load back in the dial-up days...
Score: 0
Maybe if Google would bother making a comprehensive start page for their site, people may start using their other services. As it is right now, Google's offerings beyond search results are buried from the casual user.
Score: 0
This is actually what makes Google a better service than the other search engines which have bloated front pages that take forever to load.
Besides, Google actually does have a personalized front page which you can easily get to at http://www.google.com/ig
Score: 0