I know that some of your questioners have asked at various times about
Google's competition. So here's yet another one.

Does Ask Jeeves, Overture  or Yahoo have an equivalent service to Google Answers?
 
 If so can you tell me how to access it?

  Thanks

   Mongolia

---

Request for Question Clarification by librariankt-ga on 03 May 2004 13:44 PDT

Hi Mongolia,

I've been calling the three companies to get an answer.  Yahoo!'s
system is totally labyrinthine and I can't get anywhere, but also have
not been able to find any service of this type among their other
services.  It's also just not the type of thing they sponsor (and
isn't an option in their phone menu, which trust me, I've dug through
ad nauseam).  I got an answer from Overture (nice people, there, and
easy to reach, which is shocking considering Yahoo! owns Overture
now).  I'm waiting for the AskJeeves people to call me back.

My clarification request is, once I hear back from AskJeeves, will you
accept an answer that is definite for two of the services and
as-close-to-definite-as-I-can-get for the third?

- Librariankt

---

Clarification of Question by mongolia-ga on 03 May 2004 14:04 PDT

Dear Librariankt

 Yes if you can give me answers for two out of three that would be fine

 Mongolia

Hi Mongolia,

All right, I have spoken to people at AskJeeves and Overture, and have
some info for you on AskYahoo!  (thanks, Pinkfreud!  you da best!).

AskJeeves does not have a service to answer questions for people.  The
nice lady from customer support (Sarah, I think, she had a British
accent) said, "I guess people just have to get their own answers."  :)

Overture also does not have a service like Google Answers.  The
extremely gregarious man in customer support to whom I talked said
he'd try to answer any question I could ask him, but that there wasn't
an online service that would do the same.  Note that Overture was
purchased by Yahoo! last October, and was GoTo.com in a previous life.

Yahoo! has the AskYahoo! service (http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/), but that
is different from Google Answers in several ways:
- It's free
- You can't tell who's answering your question
- You can't rate the answer you got as helpful etc.
- You also can't clarify either your question or the answer you get back.
- They select which questions they want to answer: "We try to pick
questions that we think our readers will find interesting, helpful, or
entertaining." Which means that there's no way to tell when or if your
question will be answered.  I have to say, they get some wacky ones. 
My favorite among the "most popular" (http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/most/)
is "What exactly is tapioca?" closely followed by "How far can skunks
spray their smelly fluids?"

To find AskYahoo!, go to "More Yahoo!"
(http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/family/more.html) and select it from the
"Editorial Features" in the nav bar at the left.

As a librarian, I find that the middle points above are the most
critical for evaluating a question answering service - and are
features that really make Google Answers stand out.  But that's just
me, and you might call me biased!

As noted above, I found these answers both by poking around on the
websites www.askjeeves.com, www.overture.com, and www.yahoo.com, and
by calling up the customer service numbers (don't try calling Yahoo!
it's a lost cause).

- Librariankt

---

Clarification of Answer by librariankt-ga on 04 May 2004 14:27 PDT

Thanks for the tip, Mongolia!

I think one of the things that really makes Google Answers different
from a lot of the other question-answering sites is its affiliation
with a top search engine.  Most of the other sites (actually I think
one of the answers cited by Aceresearcher was written by me!) are
stand-alone products, which means they neither have as much visibility
nor as much clout supporting them.  That makes it hard to attract both
clients and workers to sustain the site.  In my experience Google also
does a much better job with screening applicants and then training and
monitoring (especially new) researchers than the others do.

I feel duty bound to mention that my second-favorite service is the
Internet Public Library (www.ipl.org), where I have also been known to
answer questions.  Actually I'm wearing my IPL tee-shirt today!

- Librariankt

Dear librariankt

 Between your answer and the other comments posted , it goes most of
the way to answering my question. I am surprised that Google appears
to be (Well almost)
 the 'only game in town' when it comes to this particular type of facility.
 
Kind Regards

 Mongolia

There is absolutely NOTHING to compare with GA!

There's "Ask Yahoo!":

http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/askquestion.html

Ask Yahoo! is free, but the service does not attempt to answer all the
questions that are submitted.

You might look at this post.. (a list of services which compete with
answers.google.com) :)

http://6url.com/R6

Similar Questions have been asked here in the past. You may want to check them out:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=308769
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=252469
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=250464
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=210927
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview&id=184926
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview&id=183866
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview&id=155820
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview&id=71183
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=51294
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview&id=35858


You may also want to explore these categories (and their
subcategories) in the Google Directory (DMOZ):

http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Ask_an_Expert
http://directory.google.com/Top/Shopping/Auctions/Specialty/Answers_and_Expertise/
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Education/FAQs,_Help,_and_Tutorials
http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Advice

Regards,

aceresearcher

Sorry I didn't have time to do the research...but had a few names.
I like Sportsplex.  
Sportsplex Plus or Sportsplex +
Mega-Sports Ctr., Mega-Sports Plus or (+)sign, Mega-Sportsplex, 
Multi Sportsplex, E.S.P. Center (E. S. P. Ctr.)
Sports Extra or Sports Xtra      X  P  L
Sport-a-rama Center              T  O  U
Courts Plus                      R  R  S
                                 E  T
                                 M  S
                                 E

1mor-ga

Have you had 1 too many?

I suggest that your Comment would have sat happier here:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=342025