I absolutely love GOOGLE-ANSWERS!! More fun and entertainment than WWW
itself in my opinion!   Already got terrific response to earlier query
that was very well researched indeed,  and a credit to freelance
researcher.  However on reading "SEARCHDAY" and other views from
Search Engine  experts and writers in the business I find that the
American anti-GOOGLE brigade
is not only predicting a quick death for the concept but obviously
sincerely hoping that it dies as well. WHY!!

 They point out a few reasons as follows-:  

 1) This is a novelty for GOOGLE management that they will soon tire
of and simply shut down overnight; citing minimal income for GOOGLE
relative to the high clerical & technical administrative costs as the
reasons why.

 2) Internet users have got well used to the idea of information for
no cost at all on the net' and its way too late to begin charging
people for any such service.

 2a)In any case if they do pay they will be expecting information for
next to nothing and at best a charge of $1.75 would be appropriate or
all that most would be prepared to pay. On the contrary however it
appears to me and my calculator that to date questions have averaged
$12.25 each and rising!!    This is a long way from the minimum $4.00
allowable and further from the $1.75 suggested by one writer so would
seem to torpedo that argument at this stage of concept's life at least

 3)In light of situation at 2) and 2a) and that such a  progressive
reduction in price  people are prepared to pay will soon become
evident on GOOGLE-ANSWERS, the current researchers will see their
efforts as a lot of hard work & research time for  little gain, and
begin to  drop off the screen as a result.   Consequently researcher
numbers will  become unviable for GOOGLE Management to continue with.
One writer said that if GOOGLE was serious they would have sought out
second or third world researchers just as smart as current batch who
would have been able to make decent wages by their country's standards
and been far more keen to continue the daily  scan of questions and
respond reliably each day. This sounds like a pertinent comment to me,
yes?? no??

4) People will always  prefer to use libraries and in any case
libraries can answer more questions more comprehensivley than
GOOGLE-ANSWERS and people will come to understand this.  From my
perspective this would appear a dumb argument as critis are seeing G-A
as only a vehicle for school project type questions only. This is at
odds with all the weird and wonderful  questions coming through
that are clearly not the type of abstract type questions that could be
answered in any library thatI know.

  Thats enough. Hoping for some good answers and/or comments on Points
1,2,2a, etc from researcher for my $12.25(assuming GOOGLE allows you
to answer) which is a lot of money in my part of the world.
  Perhaps you have no qualitative information on subject and cant
answer??
  In this case any worthwhile frank opinions would be welcomed.
    Also look forward to any commenters comments if anyone interested.

  If at all possible and you have some link to GOOGLE management I
would like to know if the 12.25 average  is about what they were
expecting as an average question price offered, or something less or
somthing more?? Also were they expecting such strange questions to
come up or the more traditional textbook type stuff or school project
material.

 Thanks a lot,

    John

Thank you for your questions about Google Answers and your interest
in helping us improve our product.  
 
To address your questions:
  
All publicly available information about Google Answers is available
on our web site at:  https://answers.google.com

All publicly available information about Google is available at the
main Google web site at:  www.google.com

Regarding your feedback, we greatly appreciate feedback from our
users.  Google Answers is in beta and will go through revisions over
time with the help of feedback like this. However, for your reference,
the quickest, more efficient way for your feedback and ideas to be
considered by the Google Answers Team is to email us at:

answers-support@google.com 
 
Thank you again for using Google Answers.

John, i think I disagree.  I tried Keen before (similar service) but
never got answers. I'm trying this and getting responses, good one. I
don't mind paying $10, $20 $50 for answers.  Google seem to have it
right again in my limited experience of the service.  I'm interested
in why you want to know if it will work.  If Google were public it
would matter from a stock viewpoint.  Or do you have a business
interest?  I'm invested heavilty in PPP engines and follow the
industry so i'm interested in your interest, if that makes sense :-)
Mike
If you can't reply to my comments online, would love to know by email,
mike@headsets.com.

2) Internet users have got well used to the idea of information for 
no cost at all on the net' and its way too late to begin charging 
people for any such service. 

Google isn't charging for the information, they're charging to help
people find it.  Believe it or not, there are a lot of people that
don't have extraordinary researching skills and may have a hard time
finding an answer to their question on the web.  So if they need an
answer fast and want to pay someone to help them out, what's the harm
in that?  This isn't the End of the Internet As We Know It, it's just
a nice idea being evolved into a pretty neat service.

I'm curious to where you claim that this service has a high clerical
and technical cost.  How many editors do you need policing the queries
for content and appropriateness?

In my former life (retail electronics, internationally known chain) we
were continually plagued with phone calls and walk-ins seeking
information with only the most tenuous (or no) connection to what we
did for a living.  The world (and the www) is crammed to bursting with
information of all kinds.  Finding the pertinent information can be
tedious and time consuming, and many people just don't have the time
to learn the skills involved.

Businesses and people in a hurry seem to be the heaviest users, from
my admittedly brief acquaintance with the service.  Call me crazy, but
I don't see those categories dwindling any time soon.

Can't wait 'til I can answer questions and make some $ for doing
something I enjoy!

Having been part of answers.com which started in 1996 and closed up as
a pay for answers concept in 1998, I'd like to comment on this line of
interest.  answers.com collected a significant amount of answer
revenue at a time when people were quite sceptical about charging
anything on the Internet.  The problem was, as you state, the
relatively low researcher income from the amount of time necessary to
answer the extremely detailed questions people ask at low revenue
estimates.  answers.com tried to evolve to short term "custom"
research questions which were mini-consulting projects.  The
differences which are positive for answers.google are:
1.  The bandwidth that people are operating today is quite a bit
faster than in 1996 when most "researchers" had only dial up
connections to use for searching.
2.

Sorry my finger slipped but I'll continue
2.   The development of google itself is an aid to searching that was
not available in 1996. Early search engines, bots, crawlers etc were
primitive to say the least.   Yes it is easier to search but still
requires some skills to find the relevant infomation.
3.   answers.google is building a "sense of community" which is
valuable in providing comments and clarifications that in itself
brings more people to the search engine. I'll be interested to see if
there is a nominal increase in google "hits" as a result of the
creative approach to answers.
4.   The "pay for listing" model started by goto.com (now
overture.com) and now adopted by google creates a revenue stream by
from the "preferred listings".  Bringing eyeballs to the listers is
what it is all about.
5.  You need to look upon answers.google as advertising expense for
google.  They may find that it becomes revenue/loss neutral
(hopefully) since the overhead cost should be low being mostly
marginal increase in computer time and storage and requiring only
editors and a few dedicated researchers to supplement the distributed
workers.
5.   The quality of the answers are outstanding on those questions
which are answered... Establishing an exiration date for the
question,reduces people's frustration with the service since the
question will expire naturally if it cannot be answered, or if the
revenue provided does not justify the research required.

Doom??  Too early to tell......

Hi John.

As seedy said, it's way too soon to predict doom for this service. 
*Way* too soon!  We're in Beta, for heaven's sake!

I read the article in which someone claimed that people were paying
only $1.75 for information, and I wrote the author myself to correct
him.  The author of that article is not terribly knowledgeable when it
comes to the 'Net in general, or Google specifically - his claim that
Google "owns and operates Usenet" ought to be the first hint that
we're looking at one (bitter) man's opinion and nothing more.

Low income?  Not this researcher.  I've never been so well compensated
for part time work before - sitting in my chair, doing something I
love to do anyway! I'm being compensated for my actual work, and I
enjoy a flexibility that I've never had with any other job - if I want
to take the day off, I can, and no one will fuss at me or threaten to
fire me.  It's the perfect part time job!

The Answers staff is prompt, friendly, and fun to correspond with, and
the work is highly enjoyable.  Fail?  Soon?

No, I don't think so.

missy-ga

I enjoyed answering questions on a similar program called InfoRocket.
Unfortunatly, I had to stop when they changed from a web-online-answer
to a telephone-answer setup. People were not interested in
transatlantic telephone calls. A pity, as being UK based, I was able
to answer many questions from personal experience and local research
for people all over the world. The average charge was about $8 as I
recall.

I feel there is a need for the service as long as the quality is
maintained. I hope Google take the long-sighted view and stay the
course.

I also used Google from almost Day 1 and my web site stats show *ten
times* more searches finding us with Google/Yahoo than with the next
most popular, MSN.

Google works!

Google Answers can provide significant benefits to Google and its
users, and I don't think it will fail anytime soon.  Indeed, it
could become a significant force in driving the value of Google much
higher than it already is, and it could bring in revenue
rather than being a cost.


A problem Google faces is how to identify the high quality
pages on the web.  Their PageRank technology relies on 
page popularity and other parameters, hoping that
a more popular page will provide better data about its content.

A better metric of quality might be provided by an accurate
analysis of page content.  It would be good to know whether the
content of a page was correct, and if it held useful answers
to specific questions.  However, analyzing the content of a page
is very difficult for a software program to do.

One solution to the content analysis problem is to have humans
evaluate page content, which is what Google Answers does;
and Google gets paid for each piece of content analysis work
that is done (rather than paying to have it done).
Also, I believe Google's terms give it rights to all the answers
that anyone enters on the system.

The Google Answers service will build a data base
of web pages that have been evaluated by at least
two humans (seeker and researcher) and found to have real value.

Google could use this data base to add another parameter
to their ranking algorithm:
Was this page useful to any Google Answers researcher?

No other search engine will have this unique collection of data.

The data base could help Google to refine the raw data
available on the web into accurate and useful
and much more valuable information (which can lead to 
knowledge and eventually wisdom, but I digress).  All web
searchers will profit from having a search tool that knows
which pages have specific and accurate answers. 

The Google Answers service certainly promotes Google's mission:

"Organize the world's information and make it universally
accessible and useful."
< ://www.google.com/jobs/great-people-needed.html >

This body of questions and answers will be a significant resource
that Google could use to create more wealth (eg, search the 
Google Answers list for a price, or do the standard Google search for
free).  The money they earn will enable Google to continue to pursue
its mission.  I think that we all need a financially sound and
successful Google (or something like it) for the Internet to
continue to grow and be a valuable resource for the world.


I applaud this new initiative by Google and wish them 
great success.  I look forward to the day when I can make
a search and not need to look at more than two or three links 
on the first response page before finding a good answer.