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=                           Google Answers                           =
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                            Introduction
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Google Answers was an online knowledge market offered by Google,
online from 2002 to 2006.


                              History
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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.

Google Answers was launched in April 2002. A month later, a search
feature was added.

Google Answers came out of beta in May 2003. It received more than 100
question postings per day when the service ended in December 2006.
According to Danny Sullivan of Searchenginewatch, Google Answers was
not solid enough to compete against Yahoo Answers.

In late November 2006, Google reported that it planned to permanently
shut down the service (except for the Hong Kong and Arabic versions).
No new questions were accepted after November 30, 2006 and no new
answers were accepted after December 31, 2006. It was fully closed by
late December 2006, although its archives remain available.

Google opened related sites, one in Russia also called Google
Questions and Answers in 2007, 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 June 2014.

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.


Process
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Google Answers 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.

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. 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.

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 Google Search, when a user would put "why?" at the end of a search
query, Google would show a link to Google Answers where the answer
could be provided for a fee.


Question structure
====================
* The clients question, to which the Researcher could respond with a
request for clarification if any part of a question was unclear.
* The answer remained empty if the question had not yet been answered
and 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 provided an area 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.

The pages of Google Answers' website ranked extremely well in Google's
search results, the commenting system was widely used by the SEO
community to benefit from this feature.


Rules
=======
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.


                             Criticism
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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 was 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.


                              See also
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* Comparison of Q&A sites
* Knowledge market
* Google Questions and Answers
* Google
* Google Answers using Wikipedia (2003-2005)


                           External links
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* [http://answers.google.com/answers/ Google Answers]
* Benjamin Edelman,
[http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/pubs/googleanswers-011404.pdf
Earnings and Ratings at Google Answers], Harvard.edu
* Tobias Regner,
[http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/CMPO/workingpapers/wp115.pdfWhy Voluntary
Contributions? Google Answers], CMPO Working Paper Series No. 05/115
* Sheizaf Rafaeli, Daphne R. Raban, Gilad Ravid,
[http://jellis.net/research/group2005/papers/RafaeliRabanRavidGoogleAnswersGroup
05.pdf
Social and Economic Incentives in Google Answers]


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=========
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