Google Answers the wrong question - shuts down

Google Answers is shutting down after 4 years. Based on my experience at AltaVista I never thought it would catch on with consumers. Who wants to wait for an answer to a search query? Any wait beyond half a second becomes intolerable for most users. Secondly, how can an answer service be profitable and scale? Too much time and too many people involved for it to work.

This hasn't stopped Yahoo and Microsoft from offering their own "Answers" service. Danny Sullivan thinks Yahoo Answers has been a great success. Microsoft has responded with its own Answer service call Live QnA. I don't have any statistics on the usage of any of these services. It would be interesting to know the real numbers. Hey, I think I will enter a query on all three services asking how many people use the service. I will report back the answers and how long it took for them to respond. This could be a very interesting test. Stay tuned.

Subscribe - To get an automatic feed of all future posts subscribe here, or to receive them via email go here and enter your email address in the box in the right column.

Comments

[Noni moos]

When you start posting questions on those services, you will understand why this model has problems and why the new models using real time Live Audio and Video like http://www.BitWine.com are poised to be successful.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/28/bitwine-gives-acces-to-those-in-the-know/#comments

The first reason is time to answer (which Google did not solve), yet Yahoo improved dramatically by spicing the process with game like good points and earned participation levels.

Real-Time Audio & Video helps you get your answer fast.

The second reason is customization. at this point all text based Answering sites suffer from. If you use too many words in you question no one will answer, if you use too little you will get answers all over the map, then you will have to ask clarification question and you will get tired very quickly and you loose the time factor again.

With Real-Time Audio & Video you modify the question on the fly as you talk to the expert. You describe your individual problem and get a very specific answer.

The third aspect is Trust. Google Answers gave you Search Experts (not topic experts), Yahoo have paid experts, but many answers come from kids who like to play (see first reason). There is no way of knowing who is behind the text or text chat. Would you spend $5G on a new camera just because some kid with quick fingers told you so?

With Video & Audio you see who you talk to. You can use all your senses and intelligence to qualify the expert for what he is real or a fraud.

So why BitWine over other video solutions, well few reasons, BitWine uses both Skype & PayPal. Skype has 130M Installs, PayPal over 100M users, (Overlap on those two is growing fast). BitWine is in Skype 3.0 so exposure should be high.

So far BitWine are the only guys the provide instant gratification, for the Buyer & Seller. The Expert get paid instantly.

Add the ranking system that will drive quality up and you should see a winner.

[myles]

The last poster was quite a way off the mark.

have you seen how truely rubbish and pathetic most of the answers are that yahoo answers gives?? there has been no vetting process and most of the replies seem as though a 12 year old wrote them. It is a free for all that gives you crap responses rather than well educated answers.

i will not use yahoo answers ever!

Google answers is another ball game. It is not just a "please search this for me as i dont want to do it myself" as your post mistakenly believes. It is a "this question cant be answered through a simple search please give me any information you have on it and any relevant references you know of." Google answers researches are trained and experienced answerers who know what they are doing. Yahoo answers answerers are a bunch of anybodies deciding to just post any old crap for anyone to see!!

Losing GA will be a massive blow to those people who actually want sensible answers and not crap.

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ganswers/

[steve]

dan, i think you are missing the value of 'answer' sites. Its not a matter of waiting days for an answer. The primise is that OVER TIME, there are no unique questions. Therefore, when a user asks a question, the answer will already be recorded... thus instantly available.

[Steve M.]

Two important points:

#1. Yahoo Answers is doing wonderfully; quickly becoming a monster hit. According to the Sept ‘06 issue of Business 2.0, it’s now the second most popular Internet reference site after Wikipedia (per Comscore); with an impressive 10+ million unique visitors/month.

#2. Because the press isn’t currently “big” on Yahoo (or Microsoft either, for that matter), though, don’t expect the kind of positive headlines that media darling Google would receive over such a successful new service...or much attention either to (let’s call it what it is, shall we) this Google failure.

Unbalanced reporting via-a-vis Yahoo/Microsoft/Google?

This is just one more example.