A View on View :: Goodbye, Google Answers

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Goodbye, Google Answers

by Mark Evans on Wed 29 Nov 2006 08:15 AM EST | Permanent Link

In what may be a first for Google, the company has decided to shut down one of its sideshows/experiments - Google Answers - after more than four years. Is this a new strategic direction for Google and/or a sign of the times that some projects should die a quiet death if they're not working well? If this is Google's new approach, you wonder how long it will be before Okrut and Froogle are pushed out of the portfolio. Who knows, maybe this move suggests Google will be more pragmatic about rolling out new services rather than slapping stuff on the wall and seeing if it sticks. While Google gets points for experimenting with all kinds of different things, its less-than-stellar success into new markets (Google Spreadsheets, anyone?) has arguably damaged its reputation as an innovator more than it has produced tangible benefits. Update: Rex Hammock has a theory why Google Answers failed: Wikipedia.

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Comments

Re: Goodbye, Google Answers

by Sean on Wed 29 Nov 2006 10:31 AM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

Interesting that you should post about this, as I was just looking at the Google Labs page yesterday. While I can understand the need to let a company's embedded creativity loose, one has to ask how many resources are being committed to unworthy pet projects. Examples from Google Labs include Google Suggest (interesting, but a somewhat annoying user experience) and Google Sets (some have noted its usefulness for generating keywords, but the quality of a few tests provided marginal results). While I'm at it, you might as well throw in Google Ride Finder, Google Transit and Google Mars.

Maybe I'm wrong and this will all come together in one giant "Aha!" moment. So far, all this seems like spaghetti thrown at the wall.

Re: Re: Goodbye, Google Answers

by Mark Evans on Wed 29 Nov 2006 12:58 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

i think a lot of people are waiting for the "big aha" moment.

Re: Re: Goodbye, Google Answers

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Re: Goodbye, Google Answers

by Mathew on Wed 29 Nov 2006 01:48 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

Rex has a good point, but as I asked him in his comments, if Wikipedia is the reason Google Answers didn't work, then why is Yahoo Answers doing so well?

Re: Re: Goodbye, Google Answers

by Anonymous on Thu 30 Nov 2006 05:27 PM EST | Permanent Link

Its pretty simple really... people rather go to a website that answers questions for free and may get you the right answer 80% of the time (despite the difficulty of the question) than go to a website to pay for answers that may be 90 or 95% correct.

As an avid Yahoo answers user, I rather throw out a question for free and see what comes back in the way of answers. Yahoo's problem is that they are losing quality of answers as time continues. If they can handle that issue, it will continue to grow.

Re: Goodbye, Google Answers

by bysturyu on Wed 08 Aug 2007 11:29 AM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

I should, however, address some concerns expressed by readers. It seems there's confusion between demand-response during peak times and conservation any time. Some people believe it's absurd to pay companies to not use electricity, and on the surface it does sound odd. But if you remember that this is just for peak times -- those few dozen hours of the year we really need the electricity -- then the purpose becomes clearer. Of course we're going to need more baseload generation over time, even if we're going to go aggressively into conservation. Voluntary conservation can't be relied on. This is why demand-response programs that oblige participants to a 95-per-cent power cutback are so useful.chest pain cure

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\n"; return $new_ad_params; } } /** BEGIN Backwards Compatibility Routines */ if (! function_exists('array_combine')) { function array_combine($keys, $values) { foreach($keys as $key) $out[$key] = array_shift($values); return $out; } } if (!function_exists('fputcsv')) { function fputcsv($filePointer, $dataArray, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { // Write a line to a file // $filePointer = the file resource to write to // $dataArray = the data to write out // $delimeter = the field separator // Build the string $string = ""; // No leading delimiter $writeDelimiter = FALSE; foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) { // Replaces a double quote with two double quotes $dataElement=str_replace("\"", "\"\"", $dataElement); // Adds a delimiter before each field (except the first) if($writeDelimiter) $string .= $delimiter; // Encloses each field with $enclosure and adds it to the string $string .= $enclosure . $dataElement . $enclosure; // Delimiters are used every time except the first. $writeDelimiter = TRUE; } // end foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) // Append new line $string .= "\n"; // Write the string to the file return fwrite($filePointer,$string); } } if (!function_exists('fgetcsv')) { #TODO - Remove or ??? #Originally built to handle PHP4 style of fgetcsv $CSVstruct = array('Sep' => ','); function fgetcsv($handle, $length=1024, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { $rows = ParseCSVStream(fgets($handle),"\n",false); return $rows[0]; } } // append a CSV row containing data converted from source array $data. Actual conversion is done by ExCSVRowWalker() function AppendCSVRow($data) { global $CSVstruct; array_walk($data,'ExCSVRowWalker'.($CSVstruct['OutEOL']=="\n"?'N':'')); $CSVstruct['File'] .= implode($CSVstruct['Sep'],$data).$CSVstruct['OutEOL']; } // returns an array of rows (each row being an array of columns) with parsed data. Returns false when conversion fails. Auto-detects Win/Mac/*nix newline characters, which are converted all to the sequence specified (defaults to $CSVstruct['OutEOL']) for your convenience. function ParseCSVStream($data, $newline="\n", $associative=true) { global $CSVstruct; $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\r","\n",str_replace("\r\n","\n",$data)); if ($newline!="\n") $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\n",$newline,$CSVstruct['File']); $CSVstruct['OutEOL'] = $newline; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = 0; $CSVstruct['Error'] = false; $CSVstruct['EOF'] = false; $res = array(); if ($associative) { $titles = ParseCSVRow(); while (($row = ParseCSVRow())!==false) { $newa = array(); //possible optimization: might use array_combine() - requires PHP 5 for ($col = 0; $col0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',str_replace($CSVstruct['OutEOL'],"\n",$item)).'"'; } function ExCSVRowWalkerN(&$item) { if (!is_numeric($item)&&(strlen($item)>0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',$item).'"'; } // read next line from buffer. function RowInput() { global $CSVstruct; if ($CSVstruct['EOF']) { return ""; } else { $pos = strpos($CSVstruct['File'], $CSVstruct['OutEOL'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); if ($pos===false) { $CSVstruct['EOF'] = true; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); } else { $pos1 = $CSVstruct['Seek']; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = $pos+1; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$pos1,$pos-$pos1); }; }; } /** Initialize ad_network variable */ $ad_logic = new ad_logic($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); $ad_network = $ad_logic->ad_network($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); ?>