Comments on: Google loses one battle to the competition.

Google loses one battle to the competition.

JJ86 — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 06:59:11 -0800

Google Answers Goes 404. Is it too much competition from Yahoo! answers or Metafilter?

By: blind.wombat

blind.wombat — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:01:37 -0800

By: DenOfSizer

DenOfSizer — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:01:54 -0800

REally, shouldn't this go to AxMe?

By: mecran01

mecran01 — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:02:02 -0800

I bet it was a legal liability issue.

By: spicynuts

spicynuts — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:05:11 -0800

This thread is gonna go 404.

By: Zinger

Zinger — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:23:37 -0800

odd that it should go now... it was around for a while

By: Plutor

Plutor — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:29:43 -0800

So was the Holy Roman Empire.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:32:31 -0800

No one expects the demise of the Google Inquisition!

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:40:16 -0800

*ring* *ring* *ring* OH GOD THEY'RE NOT ANSWERING

By: delmoi

delmoi — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:40:58 -0800

It's not really 404, I mean, the page is still there.

By: tehloki

tehloki — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 08:04:16 -0800

Shh, delmoi. It was a beautiful metaphor. RIP Google answers. I will always miss asking stupid questions to silly people and getting vauge, hilarious answers.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 08:28:11 -0800

Like you can't do that here tehloki? *waits for vaguely hilarious answer*

By: soundofsuburbia

soundofsuburbia — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 08:37:03 -0800

Why, Google Answer? WHYYY??? *crickets*

By: fenriq

fenriq — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 08:37:16 -0800

My guess is that Google realized that there were plenty of other places doing the same thing for free and that they were never going to turn it into the cash cow they thought it would be. I applaud them for killing it. And Yahoo gets the Bronx cheer for crowing so loudly about their Answers numbers (one media blog said they got four separate emails about the closure, talk about scratching for good news).

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 10:00:56 -0800

It's pretty obvious what the problem with Google Answers was from the start: it's human powered. It doesn't scale. It takes lots of energy, time, and money to run it right (which we've learned from running ask mefi). Google isn't about running huge human endeavors, they're more about writing one line of python code and having it affect a billion users. Google Answers is gone because Google isn't in the people business, they're in the computer programming business.

By: EatTheWeak

EatTheWeak — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 10:03:03 -0800

Well shit. I only just learned of Google Answers by reading this thread.

By: smallerdemon

smallerdemon — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 10:13:43 -0800

Google Answers is gone because Google isn't in the people business... *heh heh* I hope that doesn't imply Yahoo! is in the people business, because everything related too Yahoo! that they didn't buy has always been shite from what I can tell. At least since they stopped being a directory services back in the whenever it happened.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 10:32:51 -0800

Why, pull up a milk crate, sonny, and we'll tell you the tales of the Stanford Closet, with detours provided by Gopher, Archie and Veronica. And a swift kick in the Kibos from B1FF.

By: cenoxo

cenoxo — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 10:59:07 -0800

Google Answers is gone because Google isn't in the people business, they're in the computer programming business. Sad but true, and technology rolls ever onward. GA researchers didn't make much answering questions, but now they're not making anything at all. .

By: Chuckles

Chuckles — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 13:29:13 -0800

Google Answers is gone because Google isn't in the people business, they're in the computer programming business. Yes! Much more likely than all the "don't bring money into the equation" type comments in the MetaTalk thread.

By: zouhair

zouhair — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 15:05:05 -0800

That's what happen when you try too much thing in too short time

By: neuron

neuron — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 22:16:22 -0800

If you're wondering if there are any stupid people in the world, go to Yahoo Answers.

By: hades

hades — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 23:00:54 -0800

My apologies for the length, but I don't see this linked to either here or in the meta thread. Here's the email I got on Wednesday about this:

Dear Researchers, Over the past year, many of you have written to ask about the future of Google Answers. Today we can finally offer a definitive response: after four and a half years, we're closing up shop. We considered many factors in reaching this difficult decision, and ultimately decided that the Answers community's limited size and other product considerations made it more effective for us to focus our efforts on other ways to help our users find information. So November 30th, 2006 will be the final day that users can post questions, and December 30th will be the final day that you can post answers. The existing site content -- questions, answers and comments -- will remain posted for now, and while you won't be able to earn money by answering new questions, we'd like to share with you the AdSense revenue generated by questions you've already answered; over the next few weeks, we'll send along more details as to how this will work. Please feel free to send any further questions to answers-editors+questions@google.com. We'll try to post the answers to frequently asked questions to the Google Group so that everyone can see them. Finally, we'd like to express our gratitude to all our researchers for your tremendous contributions and dedication to Google Answers over the years. Through your passion for research and information, you've built a service that has been of great benefit to thousands of web surfers as well as the group of loyal Answers fans who've contributed regularly to the site. We hope you'll continue to work to help make the world's information more accessible, and we'll strive to do the same. Sincerely, The Google Answers Team

(I signed up to be a researcher early on, but I don't think I ever answered a question there. Not for money, for sure.)