Google gives up on charging for answers
Why pay for the answer when you can just Google it?
Search giant Google Inc. is ending its 4-year-old Google Answers service, with which a user could submit a question and specify how much he or she was willing to pay for an answer. The service acted as a middleman for freelance researchers, who were paid for answering the queries.
For example, users have paid to find out how many tyrannosaurs’ remains are in a gallon of gasoline (a $10 answer: 1/460th), whether one should drink water from an air conditioner ($4: no, because it contains dust and bacteria) and “why flies survive a good microwaving” ($2: a fly that stays in motion won’t absorb sufficient energy to be cooked).
But with Google’s search engine and a host of other question-answering services on the Web offering many of the same responses absolutely free, Google’s service never really stuck.
“The availability of free information and services makes this a hard sell for people,” said Greg Sterling, an analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company said it would stop accepting questions this week.
Google rarely admits that its services have failed -- it usually keeps them online, even in obscurity. Observers chalked up the shuttering of the service as a win for rival Yahoo Inc.
Yahoo Answers, which lets users post questions to which anyone can respond, has provided 160 million answers without any money changing hands.
“It’s the wisdom of the crowds,” said Eckart Walther, a Yahoo vice president.
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