Google Answers
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Type of site
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Knowledge market Reference desk |
|---|---|
| Available in | English, Arabic, Russian |
| Owner | |
| Website | answers.google.com |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Yes |
| Launched | April 18, 2002 |
| Current status | Online, but read only since December 2006 |
Google Answers was an online knowledge market offered by Google from 2002 to 2006. It allowed users to post bounties for well-researched answers to their queries. Asker-accepted answers cost $2 to $200. Google retained 25% of the researcher's reward and a 50 cent fee per question. In addition to the researcher's fees, a client who was satisfied with the answer could also leave a tip of up to $100. In late November 2006, Google reported that it planned to permanently shut down the service (except for the Hong Kong and Arabic versions), and it was fully closed to new activity by late December 2006, although its archives remain available.
Google Answers' predecessor was Google Questions and Answers, which was launched in August 2001. This service involved Google staffers answering questions by e-mail for a flat fee (US$3.00). It was fully functional for about 24 hours, after which it was shut down, possibly due to excessive demand and the tough competition that Yahoo! set in place. and Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Google Answers was launched in April 2002 and came out of beta in May 2003. It received more than 100 question postings per day when the service ended in December 2006.
Google opened related sites, one in Russia also called Google Questions and Answers and one in China called Tianya Answers, in reference to its Chinese partner site. In September 2009, Google launched an Arabic version called Google Egabat or Google Ejabat (إجابات Google), meaning Google Answers. However, in late May 2014, this service was announced to be read-only starting from 23 Jun, 2014.
The site was designed as 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.
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