How long can a question be locked for?  I asked a question about 7
hours ago, and it's been locked since, saying "A researcher is
answering this question". Do Google just lock questions till they
decide if they want to answer it themselves?

Hello Headsetsdotcom-ga,

Thanks again for all your questions to Google Answers.  We appreciate
your business.

In response to your question here, a question can be locked for up to
an hour as many times as a researcher would like to lock it.  For more
information on this you can check the Google Answers FAQ at:

https://answers.google.com/answers/faq.html

Please, we again recommend to you that if you have questions,
suggestions, or comments in the future about Google Answers the best
place to get them answered quickly and thoroughly is by emailing us
at:

answers-support@google.com

We'd like Google Answers to be all about answering your questions and
not be all about us.

Thank you for your use of Google Answers!

Thanks for answering, although the answer is inconsistent with my
experience. I had a question locked for 7 or 8 hours the other day.  I
found later that it was locked by google pending whether they thought
it was appropriate. Funnily enought it was this question, but I had to
repost it as google decided first time it wasn't appropriate. ?

Dear headsetsdotcom,

when a researcher sees a new question, he will lock the question and
then read the question. Then he will try to gather information for the
question, and if he cannot do that, he unlocks the question. Because
there are so many researchers and commenters, and there's a great
competition for the first answerer, someone can immeaditely lock the
question again.

Dear headsets,
                 At least you can rest easy in the knowledge that one
of the worlds big businesses(or will be when they go public)GOOGLE,
knows you personally and appreciates the business they do with you. 
You may feature in their annual report one day!!  I fell foul of GA
editors as well but in retrospect I was being obnoxious.

  John From Melbourne  P.S  I think you should look at the headset
market in Melbourne as my recent attempts to acquire something that
suited showed there was few options available