Google Questions and Answers (Google Otvety, Google Ответы) was a free

knowledge market A knowledge market is a mechanism for distributing knowledge resources. There are two views on knowledge and how knowledge markets can function. One view uses a legal construct of intellectual property to make knowledge a typical scarce resource, ...

offered by

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

that allowed

users Ancient Egyptian roles * User (ancient Egyptian official), an ancient Egyptian nomarch (governor) of the Eighth Dynasty * Useramen, an ancient Egyptian vizier also called "User" Other uses * User (computing) A user is a person who ...

to collaboratively find good answers, through the web, to their questions (also referred as Google Knowledge Search). It was launched on June 28, 2007 and replaces the fee-based

Google Answers Google Answers was an online knowledge market offered by Google, online from 2002 to 2006. History Google Answers' predecessor was Google Questions and Answers, which was launched in June 2001. This service involved Google staffers answering ...

service, discontinued on December 1, 2006. Google had chosen

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

as the first country to launch this new service. The service was first launched in Russia, and then China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, as well as 17 Arab and 40 African nations. Google targeted these nations because these nations did not have sufficient Web sites to be indexed by Google's search engine. The Q&A system is an effective way to collect useful content and then be indexed by the search engine. Technologically, Google service most closely resembles analogous services by

mail.ru VK, known as Mail.ru Group until 12 October 2021, is a Russian technology company. It started in 1998 as an e-mail service and went on to become a major corporate figure in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. VK operates an e-mail s ...

, Naver and

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...

. It is

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...

ous: the

nicknames A nickname is a substitute for the proper name of a familiar person, place or thing. Commonly used to express affection, a form of endearment, and sometimes amusement, it can also be used to express defamation of character. As a concept, it is ...

of the authors of questions and answers are shown right next to their contributed content. Google uses question tagging to help users find relevant questions. Google also finds high quality answers to similar questions previous asked and return them to the user to improve answer timeliness. Furthermore, this service integrates search and converts a dissatisfied Web search (indicated by the fact that none of the returned results were clicked) to a question through natural language processing. Technical details are documented in Google's 2010 VLDB paper. As most services of this kind, Google provides an

incentive In general, incentives are anything that persuade a person to alter their behaviour. It is emphasised that incentives matter by the basic law of economists and the laws of behaviour, which state that higher incentives amount to greater levels of ...

system to motivate people to answer questions. It is based on assigning points for actions and a system of levels loosely based on the Russian system of academic degrees. An interesting feature of the incentive system is that Google's reward for visiting is higher than for posting an answer. On August 20, 2007, Google and

Tianya Club Tianya Club (Mandarin: Tiānyáshèqū 天涯社区 "End of the World" Club) is one of the most popular Internet forums in China. As of 2015, it is ranked by Alexa as the 11th most visited site in the People's Republic of China and 60th overall. I ...

, a Chinese community website, launched a free Q&A service entitled "Tianya Answers". The site has since been launched in English and French as Google Baraza at a completely different URL. Google closed its questions and answers website again on June 23, 2014 and made it read only.

Predecessor

' predecessor was also called Google Questions and Answers and was launched in August 2001. The previous service had Google staffers e-mailing responses to questions for free. It was up and functional for about a day. The demand may have overwhelmed their resources.

Aardvark

Google bought a similar site,

Aardvark The aardvark ( ; ''Orycteropus afer'') is a medium-sized, burrowing, nocturnal mammal native to Africa. It is the only living species of the order Tubulidentata, although other prehistoric species and genera of Tubulidentata are known. Unlik ...

, for $50 million in 2010, but discontinued it in 2011. Google has closed other sites after integrating their services within their own software.

Notes

External links

Google Baraza
{{DEFAULTSORT:Google Questions and Answers Questions and Answers Defunct websites Internet properties established in 2007 Internet properties disestablished in 2014 Internet properties disestablished in 2015 Question-and-answer websites

Predecessor

Aardvark

See also

Notes

External links