This can be reminiscent of the fact that paid answer sites are destined to doom. The news is that Google has announced that Google Answers will close down sometime later this week.
Although no reason has been given for this closure, the fact that a paid model is hardly any way that answer-seekers would pay to get answers when you have all resources available free all over the net. The strong showing of Yahoo! Answers, which is a free model and increasingly gaining popularity, is bound to be one of the major reasons why Google Answers has been a major flop.
The stats are even more amazing given the fact that Google’s presence and popularity on the net is nothing short of phenomenal and I expected it to offer a better showing than it has. MediaVidea writes that ‘only 800 or so’ people participated in Google Answers which is by any standards is an abysmal performance. On the other hand, a recent Oprah Winfrey show on Yahoo! Answers attracted over 20,000 participants!
In early September this year, we reported about a new social search site called ChaCha.com that pays people to answer queries from visitors. If this has happened to Google Answers, one can only imagine what will happen to it.
News: MediaVidea
