Jinfo: Google Answers is Dead! Long Live Google Answers!

Google Answers is Dead! Long Live Google Answers!
Jinfo Blog

1st January 2007

Abstract

For those unfamiliar with Google Answers, it is (was!) a human-powered, question-and-answer service begun in 2002 as the brainchild of Google co-founder Larry Page. Unlike most search-engine tools, Google Answers (gasp!) charged a fee: anywhere from $2 to $200. Not everyone is convinced that a fee-based Q&A service is workable, but in the course of its brief history, several hundred thousand people were willing to pay to have their questions answered at GA.

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David Sarokin Google Answers is officially gone. So (my non-disclosure agreement notwithstanding) this seems a good opportunity to reflect on a few questions, such as:

What the ^$#@*&% happened?
How did Yahoo! Answers prosper so mightily, while GA withered and shrank?
Just what do I mean by 'Long Live Google Answers'?

First, though, a bit of introduction. For those unfamiliar with Google Answers, it is (was!) a human-powered, question-and-answer service begun in 2002 as the brainchild of Google co-founder Larry Page. Unlike most search-engine tools, Google Answers (gasp!) charged a fee: anywhere from $2 to $200. Not everyone is convinced that a fee-based Q&A service is workable, but in the course of its brief history, several hundred thousand people were willing to pay to have their questions answered at GA.

I'd been a Google Answers researcher since its inception. I loved it! I loved being associated with one of the most innovative companies around; loved the thrill of the chase while tracking down obscure titbits of information; loved helping people get the information they needed; loved being totally mobile -- able to work when and where I pleased; and by golly, I loved getting paid for doing research that was fun.

But Google Answers was more than a job. GA built a great community of researchers, clients, and 'peanuts' -- those who frequented GA's pages and left comments that were witty, helpful, humorous and only occasionally troll-like.

For a while, GA seemed to be thriving. So much so that Google actually brought it out of beta a year after start-up ... a vote of confidence that few of its experimental services ever achieve (even Gmail is still in beta). But in November 2006, Google abruptly announced that GA was closing down, and a month later, it all came to an end. Why the sudden collapse? Here are my thoughts on what went right and what went wrong.

What went right

GA built a very high quality, very eclectic library of information on an astounding variety of subjects. There are about 75,000 answered questions, each a well-researched, well-referenced mini-article on a specific topic. To my mind, Wikipedia is the only internet resource that surpasses GA in terms of the depth, scope and sheer 'eclecticness' of the content offered. But Wikipedia, as wonderful as it is, still has some 'trust' issues with its content ... issues that don't affect the professional content at GA.

These are not simply find-the-right-link Q&As either; many of the answers are original research, creating new content. Nowhere else but Google Answers can one find out how many tyrannosaurs are in a gallon of gasoline <http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=6021>, or find out who Castec Drive in Sacramento is named after <http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=786731>. The information in these answers, and thousands of others, simply didn't exist in a consolidated form until GA researchers pulled the information together.

The GA content is tremendously information-rich. From my own experience as a researcher, I've noticed more and more GA answers showing up in my routine searches. Try a Google search on 'top selling private airplanes', and a GA answer is right near the top of the list <http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=764311>. Not because Google is favouring its own content, but because an answer at GA provides the best source of information for this particular query.

GA also built a cadre of several hundred top-notch internet researchers, all of them experts in online searching, and a number of whom had considerable expertise to offer on particular topics, whether as scientists, legal or medical experts, professional chefs, computer programmers, poets, law enforcement experts or a wide variety of other walks of life. The group of researchers gave GA its impressive scope, with an ability to answer questions ranging from advice to the lovelorn, <http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=122688 > to dealing with female vampires, <http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=517334> to radiation releases from burning coal <http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=780347>.

Google Answers also seemed perfectly viable as a business model. Though the details of the site's operations and finances are known only to a few Google insiders, it was clear that GA involved only a minor investment of people power to keep the site going and provided a small-but-steady source of revenue from both the fees paid for answers (of which, Google earned 25 per cent; the rest went to the researchers), and from the advertising revenue generated by site visits.

What went wrong

So we're back to the main question at hand: What the ^$#@*&% happened?

The only credible answer I can offer is: Who knows? Google's official announcement <http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/adieu-to-google-answers.html> didn't really say much about why they were shutting down, nor did they offer any particular insights to the researchers.

But to me, the shut-down smacks of 'new executive syndrome' ... the shake-up that occurs when a new, fairly senior person comes on board, bent on reviewing and reorienting priorities. So, even though GA is working fine, and even though it's no longer a beta-level trial run, and even though it's a Larry Page brainchild, someone decided it was simply time for GA to go!

Some observers have speculated that it was a matter of traffic and income. Google has very rapidly become a company accustomed to dealing with 'billions' as its unit of operation -- whether dollars, bytes, searches, internet users, whatever ... if something doesn't rise to the billion-level, it tends to fall off the radar screen. Perhaps such was the case with Google Answers, with its modest database of only a few hundred thousand questions.

Still, the overall operational level of the service was clear from the outset, and must have been considered when GA went through its internal company review prior to emerging from beta. So why the change of heart? Again, it seems like a new boss at work.

Building the base

But as long as we're on the topic of overall traffic, another question that pops up is: Why was Google so reluctant to promote Google Answers?

Sure, Google relies on buzz rather than advertising. That's how Google itself grew to dominate online searching, and that's become part of their corporate culture. Google, a company built on advertising revenue, doesn't do much advertising itself. But still, the company's choices regarding their GA brainchild seemed intent on keeping it hidden in the darkest corner of the internet. There was no link to GA on the main Google search page -- which currently features Images, Video, News, Maps and 'More' -- and after a while GA was even dropped from the More list.

For a brief experimental moment, GA *was* listed on the main page, and question volume soared. Researchers found themselves with the rare luxury of being able to pick and choose the juiciest questions to work on from an ample supply. But the listing was short-lived, and GA's 15 minutes in the spotlight quickly vanished.

For a long time, GA's content was not even indexed by Google's own bot, and did not show up in search results. This was eventually rectified -- I like to think because Google recognised the high quality of information that was being created -- but more time was needed to continue to build up the community of searchers who stumbled across GA via a link from a search-results page.

Yahoo! Answers vs. Google Answers: free vs. fee

So, here I am, bemoaning the demise of Google Answers, and you FreePint readers (if you've read this far) are sitting there thinking, 'What's this guy whining about??? Look how successful Yahoo! Answers has become. Why couldn't Google do that?'

Well ...<> ... <> ... the only real similarity between GA and YA is in the names. Otherwise, the two services are very different in concept and content. The difference has been noted in cartoons <http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/06dec/uf009809.gif>, a video <http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=savegoogleanswers>, and (warning: plug for me coming up) an interview <http://xooxleanswers.com/interview.aspx>.

A major difference, of course, is that Yahoo! Answers is a free service, while Google Answers charged a fee. To some, this automatically doomed GA from the start. But my own feeling is that there is plenty of room on the internet for both types of services to thrive. People pay for 'free' things all the time. Amazon.com runs a robust business, even though books can be had for free from any library. Drinking water sells for $2 a bottle, even though you can simply turn on the tap and have it for free. People will always be stopping at Starbucks for a high-priced cup of coffee, despite knowing they can brew it up themselves for next to nothing.

A whole host of factors -- convenience, quality, service, reputation, credibility -- come into play regarding the whole fee-vs.-free issue. But there's no reason to suppose that a fee-based research service couldn't make a go of it.

Still, there's no denying that Yahoo! has a huge success on its hands, traffic-wise, with its Answers program, while Google's service always struggled to make itself known.

Google made a mistake

It all comes back to marketing.

I believe the market for Answer-style services is huge. There are about a billion internet users, and sooner or later, almost all of them will be in dire need of information, and willing to pay a modest fee to have a question answered. It may only be once every five years for any given person, but still, that means many millions of paid questions and answers per year.

But when that once-in-five-years moment arrives -- when you're offered a great business deal, but you're wondering just how legitimate the company is -- you have to know where to turn to for an answer.

And that was the problem with Google Answers. People ready and willing to pay for reliable information simply didn't know where to turn to obtain it. Everyone knew how to 'Google', but hardly anyone knew how to 'Google Answers'. And for some inexplicable reason, Google made it increasingly more difficult to find GA. The service seemed doomed by its own invisibility.

Yahoo! has overcome that problem by promoting the bejeebers out of Yahoo! Answers, starting with large banner ads on the Yahoo! homepage, and moving from there to 'celebrity questions' from the likes of Al Gore and Bono.

Ahhh ... if only Google had seen fit to give GA a simple link on the main page. What a difference it could have made.

Long live Google answers

Which leaves me with my hope: Long Live Google Answers! The library of GA materials is a valuable and unique resource that should certainly live on and find use for many years to come. Google's corporate mission is to '... organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful ...' I expect, then, that the GA content will be around for a long time to come, even if the GA service is no more.

But don't despair about the end of GA (as if!). Alternatives exist, for those moments when you just have to have a high-quality answer, and you're even willing to shell out a few bucks for it.

XooxleAnswers (say 'zooks-il') is a new service at <http://xooxleanswers.com/> that was started up by one of Google Answers' most prolific researchers: me! I even have an Annex of sorts, at <http://mysite.verizon.net/dsarokin/xa/index.html> where you can learn more about the service. Some other ex-GA researchers have launched similar efforts, and I've begun compiling a list of links to their services at <http://xooxleanswers.com/links.aspx>.

Many of the ex-researchers (and a few customers) hang out at the GA Alumni Association <http://groups-beta.google.com/group/GAalumni/> and at Web-Owls <http://web-owls.com/> if you'd care to drop by for a chat.

And if 2007 seems too sad a prospect to you without Google Answers, you can still have a daily drip at 365-Days-of-Google-Answers <http://dailycalendar.googlepages.com/>.

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