King  Gary 

Well, bye bye to the first Google service to go, Google Answers; this information is straight from the official Google blog. Right from the get-go, it didn’t have too much activity going on there. I doubt that it was maintained much after the launch; it didn’t even get that much exposure after the launch, so all of these factored into the shut down of the service. The introduction of Yahoo! Answers didn’t help much at all, too; it’s a much better execution of the idea, although the demographics there seems to be for a more younger audience.

I think that one of the things that Google still doesn’t get is that a social aspect to websites can really improve their popularity. Google Answers has a really blank look to it; I’m sure one of the primary reasons is so people can go there, do what they need to do, and then leave - just like the Google search engine itself. But, you can’t apply that methodology to all websites. Yahoo! Answers has a much, much more social aspect and community feeling to it; you can see a lot of questions being asked on the home page, and everyone is encouraged to answer the questions of others. This is unlike Google Answers, which only allows professionals, whom you pay, to answer your questions, which really decreases the number of people who would want to use the service. Plus, a lot of people who ask questions online don’t even have credit cards yet!

Popularity: 33% [?]

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