Wednesday, November 29, 2006

GigaOM » Google Answers Closes Shop (Extended Version)

"The comparisons between the booming Yahoo Answers and the shuttering1 Google Answers2 (see our initial reporters’ log post3 from last night) are pretty stark. Google Answers wasn’t bad — it was an extremely cheap way to outsource random research questions and get a trustworthy result — but it never really took off. Furthermore, the product’s reliance on people didn’t fit with Google’s algorithmic ethos, so cutting it was an easy way to satisfy the company’s newfound desire to trim its product line.
Online community specialist Yahoo, on the other hand, made its own Answers4 product, released5 less than a year ago, open to the public and free of charge. The answers you’ll get on Yahoo are generally about as good as the unfiltered comments on a popular blog — definitely not professional-grade, but usually pretty useful in aggregate, with a few gems."

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