Hindsight isn’t always available with the Web. Things move faster and faster, and bloggers tend to shoot out reviews as if they were in the wild wild west. At a time when it’s customary to announce the demise of Yahoo! I found an “old” post of mine dated June 2006 (like ages ago in Internet years) about Google Answers. Here is what it said:
People-powered search engines are not really new. Internet old timers like me can remember pre-bubble attempts such as Webhelp (turned into an “old-economy” service provider now). Now and then, another firm is having a go at that concept. I suspect that it will end up working eventually … who knows? This time, it’s Yahoo’s turn to launch its beta Yahoo! Answers service.And of course, Google could not be outdone and they created (guess what name they chose?) … Google answers!God only knows who fired first. But maybe it doesn’t matter at all after all?
Less than 4 years later, that prompted me to go and have a look at that long forgotten attempt at reviving the Q&A collaborative concept popularised by Yahoo! And guess what the site says:
Google Answers is no longer accepting questions.
We’re sorry, but Google Answers has been retired, and is no longer accepting new questions. Search or browse the existing Google Answers index by using the search box above or the category links below.
This is just to show that even the best innovators do screw up from time to time, even though it seems that Google is doing a lot of that at the moment, what with the launch of Google Wave and Google Buzz. Will those last 2 services be brought to an end too? your thoughts much appreciated:
