The Official Google Blog reported last night that they will stop accepting new questions for Google Answers later this week. Google Answers has been around for 4 years and has remained relatively primitive compared to the successful Yahoo! Answers. The Google blog also states that more than 800 people have used worked on getting the answers for Google Answers over the years. That’s it? I would be shutting it down too. But at least they’ve realized this and are cutting their losses.
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I could always solve my problems Googling or asking on IRC… Google Answers never appealed to me. 800 people only… wow.
I’m assuming that’s 800 dedicated people that keep coming back.. but still.
Um, 800 is the number of people who worked on getting the answers, not the number of people who used the service to get answers.
Dan is correct.
Haha, yeah that sounds about right now. But can you blame me they worded it “The people who participated in Google Answers” – kinda works both ways…
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
Yahoo! Answers is definitely a fantastic site. Lots of fun to be had, compared to the horribly ugly Google Answers. Oh well, Google isn’t exactly fond of design outside of gmail.
What’s interesting here is that while Google is canning their answers product, Yahoo is integrating theirs with their search product. This could differentiate Yahoo’s search from Google’s. Right now, there’s not much that separates Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask. They’re all pretty static. By integrating answers, Yahoo’s injecting some humanity into search results and perhaps some freshness, as well. I wonder if they’ll take this social search evolution a step further and begin integrating del.icio.us bookmarked URLs into their search results. They could even use popular bookmarks as an indication of authority in their search ranking algorithms, akin to Google using links via PageRank. Perhaps an algorithmic tweak like that would really differentiate Yahoo’s search product.
Another question comes in my mind, is google terminating a service or does it have an ideia for something completly different and never seen before?
We all know what google is capable of so we have to consider all possible scenarios
Would this be the first time Google cans a service? If so, it’s history.
Yeah, I figured that Google Answers was a bad implementation of an answers site.