Google Retires Answers
November 29th, 2006 by pamela
While Google snaps up companies left right and centre and constantly innovates online, it has taken a strange move with Google Answers. From the start of next year the site will no longer accept questions, although it will stay open to allow users to search old Q&As from it’s archive.
With the recent success Yahoo! has had with Yahoo! Answers, this seems like a strange move, albeit one which opens up Google’s time and manpower to concentrate on other areas of the ever expanding business. Google Answers was never one of the most successful areas of the business, and at four years old, it would have been a hit before now if it ever had a chance. But traffic figures had been low and with free services competing against it, charging users for the service was always going to be difficult.
Yahoo! Answers continues to rack up the traffic, and the buzz at the site hasn’t really dropped since its launch, making Google’s poor Answers interface and service look old and tired. Yahoo! is obviously pleased with its product and integration of its Answers into Answers.com and integration of results into search results show that the company is looking at this product in the long term. With quality questions on the front page such as “Are people honking their car horns less frequently now?” and “Anyone unhappy about their embalming tutor and why?” to read, I know that Yahoo! Answers is going to keep me hooked for some time to come. Let’s see what, or if, Google have up their sleeve to counteract this type of random genius.
