Campaign to save Google Answers

Google has announced that it will stop accepting new questions to its Google Answers service later this week.

However, a group of researchers has launched an online petition to urge Google not to scrap the "valuable community service".

Google Answers allows you to find information that you have been unable to locate on the internet yourself. After submitting a question to the service, you specify how much you are willing to pay for an answer. A researcher then attempts to find the information and posts it online if he or she is successful. You only have to pay if the question is answered.

More than 800 researchers have worked on the Google Answers project since it first came into existence in August 2001, when it was known as Google Questions and Answers. And it seems that some of these researchers and many users of the service don't want say goodbye to it just yet.

"Many repeat users were able to easily find answers to difficult questions thanks to the service. Furthermore, Google Answers proved that a living could be made working on the internet alone, as many researchers worked on the site as their sole source of income," says the petition.

Google appears to think that it is time that the project was brought to a conclusion, however. "Google Answers was a great experiment which provided us with a lot of material for developing future products to serve our users. We'll continue to look for new ways to improve the search experience and to connect people to the information they want," said software engineers Andrew Fikes and Lexi Baugher on Google's blog.

But if you're looking to find out how some of the player's positions in Rugby Union got their names or the cost of living in Spain, for example, then you still can, as the answers to questions already posed will remain online.

http://www.savegoogleanswers.com/
http://answers.google.com/answers/

More news via RSS Post item to Del.icio.us Post item to Digg.com