Search-Engines writes “
Google is a company fueled by innovation, which to us means trying lots of new things all the time — and sometimes it means reconsidering our goals for a product. Later this week, we will stop accepting new questions in Google Answers, the very first project we worked on here.
If you have a chance, we encourage you to browse through the questions posted over the last 4+ years. Although we won’t be accepting any new questions, the existing Qs and As are available. We’ll stop accepting new Answers to questions by the end of the year
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/adieu-to-go ogle-answers.html “
ob. Troy McClure
“between now and when the show becomes unprofitable.” My offhand guess is that Google is scrapping the project because it failed to make enough money. Narrow margins and too much overhead managing the system (refunds for unacceptable answers, namely) for it to be of stockholder value.
So how long before Google Scholar is revamped with a similar treatment?
Re:ob. Troy McClure
Rumor mill is that it’s not so much scrapped as being replaced by something more Yahoo Answers-ish.