Seems an odd choice, given Lycos, Yahoo and a whole host of independent websites are ramping up their [admittedly entirely free] user-answers verticals
The comparison is really more with one of the freelancer sites than with the free answers sites. Unlike at the free answers services, the folks posting at Google Answers actually delivered high quality content at a very low price. It was a cheap way to outsource research for a website or a business plan, with the downside that whatever you got was posted online at a centralized site for anyone to steal.
I wouldn't be surprised if the all knowing Google saw some of the answers that were posted reappearing on other sites and decided that offering scraper bait was not the way to go.
Best ask a question quick
Why are you closing Google Answers down?
(As they don't bother to explain)
Why are you closing Google Answers down?
Your answer is probably in the blog post... The people who participated in Google Answers -- more than 800 of them over the years.
Seems an odd choice, given
Seems an odd choice, given Lycos, Yahoo and a whole host of independent websites are ramping up their [admittedly entirely free] user-answers verticals
how many
Does anybody have a count on how many mini sites google has... like totally all the blogs, all the labs stuff, etc..
Hitwise stats
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/bill-tancer/2006/11/charting_answers.html
eight HUNDRED?!
Wow that's low
Actually Was A Useful Resource
The comparison is really more with one of the freelancer sites than with the free answers sites. Unlike at the free answers services, the folks posting at Google Answers actually delivered high quality content at a very low price. It was a cheap way to outsource research for a website or a business plan, with the downside that whatever you got was posted online at a centralized site for anyone to steal.
I wouldn't be surprised if the all knowing Google saw some of the answers that were posted reappearing on other sites and decided that offering scraper bait was not the way to go.