Google Answers

Google Answers was a knowledge market offered by Google that allowed users to post bounties for well researched answers to their queries. It was launched in April 2002, and moved out of Beta in May 2003. In late November 2006, Google reported that it planned to permanently shut down the service, and it was fully closed to new activity by late December 2006, although its archives remain available.

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Overview

After the failure of the Google Questions and Answers service from August 2001, Google launched Google Answers in April 2002. It was designed to be an extension to the conventional search-- rather than doing the search themselves, users would pay someone else to do the search. Anyone could ask questions, offer a price for an answer, and researchers, who were called Google Answers Researchers or GARs, answered them. Researchers were not Google employees, but contractors that were required to complete an application process to be approved to answer for the site. They were limited in number (according to Google, there were more than 500 Researchers; in practice, there were fewer active Researchers). The application process tested their research and communication abilities.

Prices for questions ranged from $2 to $200; after a question was answered, Google kept 25% of the payment, with the answering Researcher receiving the rest. In addition to the Researcher’s fees, a client who was satisfied with the answer could also leave a tip of up to $100.

If the question was not answered, the client would not pay the question's price. However, in addition to the question's price, determined by the client, Google also charged a non-refundable $0.50 listing fee. Naturally, the higher the fee and the simpler the question, the more likely it was to be answered. Once a question was answered, it remained available for anyone to browse and comment on for free.

Each question page had three parts:

• The client's question, on which the Researcher could respond with a request for clarification if any part of a question was unclear
• The answer, which remained empty if the question had not yet been answered. Only a Researcher could post an answer. Any Researcher could answer any question, although askers could specifically request a certain Researcher in the title or body of their question. After the answer was posted, the client could communicate with the Researcher to ask for clarification of the answer; the client could also rate the answer on a one- to five-star system and tip the Researcher for a job well done.
• The comment section, where any registered user, Researchers and non-Researchers alike, could comment on the question. Some questions were "answered" in comments before a Researcher could answer. Naturally, this section, too, could be left empty, if no comments had been posted.

Researchers with low ratings could be fired, a policy which encouraged eloquence and accuracy. Also, Google stated that people who commented might be selected to become Researchers, therefore inspiring high quality comments. In practice, however, hardly any new Researchers had been hired since the original process in 2002. The service came out of beta in May 2003 and received more than 100 question postings per day when the service ended in December 2006. For a Researcher, a question was answered by logging into a special researchers page and then "locking" a question they wanted to answer. This act of "locking" claimed the question for that researcher. Questions worth less than $100 could be locked for up to four hours, and questions worth more than $100 could be locked up to eight hours at a time in order to be properly answered. A Researcher could only lock one question at a time.

Constraints

Google's policies prohibited answering questions that would obviously lead to or contain:

• Copyright infringement and privacy violations.
• Plagiarism in homework assignments.
• Discussion of Google Answers itself, or about Google policies and mechanisms (PageRank, for example).
• Links to adult oriented sites.
• Promotion of illegal activities (for example, how to make a bomb)

Criticism

Some librarians have criticized Google Answers as a service selling services that are part of the tasks of public librarians (in the United States). The most vocal of these critics has been former Google Answers Researcher Jessamyn West, whose contract was terminated after she violated the site's terms of service by publishing an article about her experience as a Google Answers Researcher. Other reference librarians claimed that the service was not detrimental to libraries, but simply operated in parallel to them .

Other critics claimed that the service encourages plagiarism. The official Google Answers policy was to remove questions that appeared to be school assignments. However, some journalists expressed concerns that sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between a "legitimate" question and a homework assignment, especially in regard to sciences and programming.

Google Answers came years after InfoRocket, a dotcom funded for the idea of an Information Ebay. It received 24 million, and failed, only to be sold to Keen.com its competitor.

Google Answers was also criticised because of the cost involved: Yahoo! Answers offered users a chance to ask questions for free, so Google Answers was much unused and eventually closed down.

Unconventional uses

Despite its professionalism, Google Answers had also developed its own unique cyberculture. One popular non-conventional practice was to ask nonsense questions, offering bounties in the $2-5 range. One of the most popular questions was “What is the meaning of life?” . Other questions were joke requests or Chuck Norris "facts". Google Answers Researchers are not always keen to answer such questions.

Because the comment section was open for any registered user, it was sometimes abused by spammers, attempting to promote a site’s PageRank by mentioning their sites. However, much of this content was removed by Google's Answers team. The site was also infested with trolls who would use carefully crafted messages to trigger flamewars or make political statements.

Closing of the service

On December, 1, 2006, Google officially ended Google Answers. No new questions were accepted after November 30, 2006 and no new answers were accepted after December 31, 2006. All previously asked and answered questions are still available for anyone to view. Possible factors contributing to the retirement of the service include fewer people using the Google Answers service, the fact that it was no longer linked from Google's home page, and the fact that Google did not notify people when their question had been answered which thus resulted in user dissatisfaction. Some experts have suggested that in light of its shortcomings, it would be better for the Google Answers service to be shut down, rather than to remain in a languishing state. In an email sent to registered researchers announcing the closure, Google wrote:

We considered many factors in reaching this difficult decision, and ultimately decided that the Answers community's limited size and other product considerations made it more effective for us to focus our efforts on other ways to help our users find information.

Several other free and paid knowledge markets have arisen in its place, including Uclue (owned and operated by former Google Answer Researchers), which more closely mimics Google Answers than most other sites.

Russian version

On June 28, 2007, Google opened a free Questions and Answers service as a replacement for Google Answers. Russia is the first country where this new service is available.

Chinese version

On August 20, 2007, Google and Tianya (a famous Chinese community website) launched a free Q&A service - “Tianya Answers“.

See also

• Yahoo! Answers
• Google Questions and Answers

External links

• Google Answers
• dmoz reference page for google answers like websites
• "365 Days of Google Answers" A calendar with information from answers on the service for each day of the year.
• Google Guide – Google Answers
• David Sarokin, "An Insider's View of Google Answers"
• Jessamyn West. "Information for Sale: My Experience With Google Answers", Searcher, Vol. 10, No. 9. October 2002, retrieved November 21, 2006.
• Jessamyn West. "Google Answers Back Or How to Become an Ex-"Google Answers" Researcher", Searcher, Vol. 11, No. 1. January 2003, retrieved November 21, 2006.

Academic research of Google Answers

• Benjamin Edelman of Harvard University checked the Earnings and Ratings at Google Answers (pdf)
• D Bainbridge, SJ Cunningham, JS Downie, “How People Describe Their Music Information Needs: A Grounded Theory Analysis Of Music Queries” (pdf)
• SJ Cunningham, D Bainbridge, M Masoodian, “How people describe their image information needs: a grounded theory analysis of visual arts queries” Digital Libraries, 2004. Proceedings of the 2004 Joint ACM/IEEE Conference, June 2004
• Tobias Regner, “Why Voluntary Contributions? Google Answers” CMPO Working Paper Series No. 05/115 [1]
• Anne R. Kenney, Nancy Y. McGovern, Ida T. Martinez, Lance J. Heidig, “Google Meets eBay: What Academic Librarians Can Learn from Alternative Information Providers” D-Lib Magazine, June 2003, Volume 9 Number 6 [2]
• Sheizaf Rafaeli, Daphne R. Raban, Gilad Ravid "Social and Economic Incentives in Google Answers", [3] (pdf)