We could tell that there was some real excitement over at Yahoo HQ yesterday – four separate Yahoo PR folks emailed to make sure we knew that Google had announced the closing of their Answers product.
While the announcement was the final nail in the Google Answers coffin, in reality, the “Answers” war has been over for months now.
Google Answers launched in 2002, at a time when the desire for cheap user generated content wasn’t valued much because the advertising market was in a slump – monetizing page views was much harder than it is today. They adopted a for-pay model, where experts received a fee for answering questions, and Google took a 25% cut. By Google’s own admission, just 800 people participated in Google Answers over the last 4+ years (note: see the first few comments here regarding the 800 users number – it’s unclear exactly what Google is referring to).
In contrast, Yahoo Answers launched less than a year ago and with a much different model. Asking a question is free, and user responses are rated by the community and ranked. Users clearly like the model. By August 2006, people had written over 30 million answers to questions, and it had become one of Yahoo’s bigger properties. Yesterday, Yahoo said that Yahoo Answers had over 60 million unique worldwide monthly visitors, who have written 160 million answers to questions.
This wasn’t a war, it was a massacre, and a case study in why all this “Web 2.0 stuff” actually has legs when applied properly. Google went for a direct revenue stream, a business model that made sense in 2002. Yahoo, launching much later, launched a free product and used the ideals of community participation to remove friction from the process and get out of the way of users. This incentivized use and has created a massive number of page views that Yahoo is now monetizing. The network effect kicked in big time.
This was a much needed win and morale boost for Yahoo, which is in the midst of executive turmoil and is struggling to remain an independent entity. Their excitement, which I’ve witnessed only indirectly over the last 24 hours, is palpable. The challenge now is whether Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, who seems to have one foot out the door, or some other Yahoo executive, can leverage this win to help turn Yahoo’s business around more generally.
And it is also a great development for Google, which has now signaled a willingness to kill off failed product experiments and deploy resources in a more efficient manner. It seems that the mantra of “features, not products” discussed by CEO Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin in their most recent public earnings call is being put into practice. This willingness to admit that a project has failed, and kill it off, will allow Google to experiment on a grander scale in the future.
Late yesterday, Yahoo!’s Tomi Poutanen posted an “open invitation” for Google Answers researchers to join Yahoo! Answers.
I tried out Yahoo Answers awhile back, asked the lame question “do birds pee and poop?” Got a ton of responses all over the board.
I wasnt even aware Google offered that service…
Ask & answer model are getting popular today, when I read this article, I would like to review another one here, that is “Google no answers”, Michael, I have to say…techcrunch is something, how about techcrunch to host an discusstion board to discuss the same business model but run by different companies? In fact, I do think someone would like that.
Maybe from the discusstion, we can find something inside out, what do you think?
Hornswaggled, what’s their answer about this lame question? lol.
Well that answers my question about questions. Next question for Yahoo. When are you going to acquire craigslist.com so you can become the leader in classifieds ads, because partnering with newspapers might seem good, but Craigslist is doing 5 billion page views per month, thus making the newspaper irrelevant, (I said in my post last week, I only use the newspaper to light my BBQ), if you acquired craigslist.com I’m sure you could monetize those 5 billion page views, which would help with your revenues and over all stock price.
I doubt Craig is interested in being acquired…
Are there more difficult questions asked on Yahoo Answers than the birds and poop one? Is it like a glorified Mechanical Turk frontend to Wikipedia?
I’m not sure what the target audience is for these types of applications. Are people asking complex questions? Are there experts answering them? How is this different than asking the drunks at the local bar for their opinion on a subject?
Question for Yahoo answers: how do you fix your sinking company? Smearing peanut butter isn’t enough — you need to clean out the whole Hollywood front-office!
This is a really really good analysis Michael. Glad to see you back in the saddle.
Not sure how Yahoo Answers can be considered a win when it’s 75% composed of stuff like the examples here:
http://www.some...ndex.php?a=4271
Hi Michael,
I have been a fan of TechCrunch since shortly after you began. I have loved following your success and watching you build a kingdom. Great Job! I have been visiting your website on a regular basis and reading your feed in NetNewsWire. Today, I removed your feed after reading the Yahoo Answers post. I have reached the point that it drives me crazy going in link circles within your posts. It would be nice if you would actually include a link TO the site or information you are discussing. There may be a link to Yahoo Answers in the post, but it wasn’t easy for me to find. When you make it difficult for me to find information and trap me in a link box of your own posts, I am no longer interested in playing or contributing to your own self aggrandizement. How many other readers have you alienated lately? Best regards and much success to you in the future. I am sure one reader no longer matters much. I miss the old TechCrunch.
Sincerely,
Rick Cummings
Sorry Rick. Good point. I’ll add links now.
For most posts, we make it really easy to get to the service just by clicking on the company logo. In this case, we’ve put two logos together so it didn’t make sense.
We aren’t being arrogant when we link internally. All we are doing is trying to tie old conversation threads together without restating a lot of content.
And, every reader matters. Come back. I’ll send you a techcrunch bumper sticker.
The only reason you need an Answers website is because the search itself sucks and you need to resort to others to help. Yahoo should learn from Google and focus more energy on improving search results and helping people get answers through that vs. relying on Answers.
to the last dude… whatever. techcrunch has multiple pages that are relevant to each other. linking them together around a central idea is the right thing to do. publication tend to develop corpuses (corpora?) because they write about the same topics from different angles over time, so why not harness their own previous work? (especially if it’s better/more relevant to what they’re saying than other sites.)
in fact, i think more news sites and blogs should do the same thing.
i also hear one can find yahoo answer pretty easy on the web, regardless of whether or not techcrunch linked ot it when they wrote about it
stop being a hater!
er… to Rick Cummings, #10
While definitely not a google-sized player, I am trying a very different approach at the “answers” model with this project I a currently working on:
http://www.glorum.com
I love Yahoo! (I bought their stocks at $23 and now they’re at $27
). I hope they kick Google’s butt in every market.
@ Rick, quit being a little wuss.
About the internal linking. My suggestion is to include these internal links at the bottom of each post – I think they call it “related links.”
I disagree with what finder said The q&a model could give you direct answers rather than you 1. coming up with a good query to describe your search 2. dig from hundreds search results and find which one really answers your question. To most of the people step 1 is really difficult and 2 is very cumbersome.
It looks to me that either search or q&a has a lot of room to improve, and either one can win over the other. Yahoo answers gained traffic, but lacks in the quality of answers. Google answer’s approach aims at quality answers, but the problematic part is its charged model. There’re several startups (I’m not from either of these
that are aiming at fixing the quality of answers, e.g. http://www.qunu.com, http://yedda.com, etc. I particularly like qunu and would love to see how these startup compete with yahoo.
The ideal scenario I can imagine for q&a is 1. user asks a question 2. user gets an answer and he’s fairly convinced the answer is correct. Yahoo answers currently provides you with dozens of answers. In a dozen, a typical case is that 3 are right, 4 are useless, and 5 are either wrong or half-wrong. That’s why many of yahoo’s question are survey typed, or non-serious questions. It’d be nice, if one answer is provided, and you’re sure this is fairly correct. Google targeted at it but failed. However, I still think q&a one day can be at that stage.
I thought I’d note that Yahoo Answers is Yahoo’s third attempt at an Answers site, with two shuttered answers sites before it, whereas Google’s was their first attempt. Not that it makes much difference, but if Yahoo can try and try again, so can Google. Let’s hope Google gets back up.
http://blog.han...m-yahoo-answers
I believe Google’s the winner. They realized the service sucked before Yahoo did.
Guys, be nice to Rick. I want him back as a reader.
Yahoo Answers is cool…but not a new concept. http://www.expe...s-exchange.com/ have been following this model for a long time.
I mostly go to Yahoo Answers for the pleasure of posting smartass answers to truly idiotic questions…though I also throw in useful answers for the occasional intelligent question I see and know the answer to.
The google fanboy syndrome runs so deep that even an article about how Yahoo gets a win over the big G eventually mentions how this is good for google! Amazing. While the logic holds some water, maybe, kinda, and I love the big G too, I just thought that was funny.
It is rarely that a news comes that google got beaten in any of the web 2.0 initiatives….does it mean that this is the begining of the END for google….
the only thing that puzzles me about stuff like this is how on earth did Google manage to be so inept? i mean, 800 users over 4 years? at what point did the MBAs in charge of Google Answers say, ‘uh guys – i think our product sucks and we should probably change something’?
Apparently, that just happened – they chopped the product completely. It’s so difficult to understand that. In such a sea of extreme competence – how could such a large sea of incompetence be allowed to wallow?
if anything, hearing this from Google makes me think they needed to be able to fire some people, and the best way to do that was to axe this product completely.
Hi Michael,
I have a different perspective on this one. I may be wrong but I don’t want to equate popularity with success. Why would we want to think that Yahoo! Answers is better just because Google shut their service down?
I was one of those 800 users who liked the Google Answers service. Reason: the content there was provided by some smart researchers. I was happy to pay them money. Granted, it didn’t work out for Google but I guess that does not mean in anyway that it will work for Yahoo! unless we just go back to “Popularity = Success” model.
User generated content is great but more content is not always good. It is the quality content that wins ultimately.
IMHO of course.
When you get in the end zone, act like you’ve been there before.
> the only thing that puzzles me about stuff like this is how on earth did Google manage to be so inept? i mean, 800 users over 4 years? at what point did the MBAs in charge of Google Answers say, ‘uh guys – i think our product sucks and we should probably change something’?
Hey, I have a question for you: why is Yahoo so inept right now, when Google already made the right decision? I’d like to remind you of something: the continued survival and usefulness of a Google or Yahoo-style research service doesn’t depend on “eyeballs,” but on an actual business model. Google Answers worked extremely well for that. Also, the “800 users” figure refers to the paid, expert researchers who answered questions, not the total userbase (probably in the thousands of people paying to get tough questions answered).
Here’s a Web 2.0 wake-up call: Yahoo Answers is a useless money pit. You cannot actually use it to get difficult questions answered which you can’t find in a search, because its users know how to search about as well as you do. The answers you’ll get will be uninformed and possibly inaccurate, because the answers are not coming from actual researchers but a bunch of high school kids who are using the website as an online game or SNS. Hopefully, the next edition of Google Answers will keep in mind the stupidity of crowds. With the exception of Groups 2, which is about to be succeeded by the excellent Groups 3, Google hasn’t done anything as remarkably stupid as Yahoo Answers yet.
I cannot agree more with Rajesh and many of the other who prefers quality answers. I too think quality is the key and yahoo now has too much garbage in its database. In real lives, when we ask a question, we want one answer and one correct answer. nonsense answers, repetitive content, false information … are all bad.
I don’t think google’s approach’s bad. what sucks is its revenue model. Almost all other q&a sites are offered free, and google’s was charged. Besides, even if your answers are superior, you need to let others acknowledge that first. That probably means you need to offer it free for a short period until ppl realize your product is really better than yahoo’s and willing to pay the money. You need to let customers be willing to take the first step.
just my 2cents.
i guess google is half-hearted with their answers product from the begining…it is not easy to find the service, unless some one clicks on google labs…and they ask money for answers (in my opinion if they are serious they would have made it free long time back…and yahoo could not have got traction like what people are saying now….i wish yahoo success but this is not a reason to celebrate, they have to come up some thing innovative to go after google)…i guess they want to kill the project and move resources to some other project
I’m actually a bit surprised at Google’s action. Google Answers created a decent asset with very little promotion and would appear to be able to run nearly on auto-pilot.
The two services are so different, it’s hard to say Yahoo “won” anything here.
Even though Yahoo Answers is 99% crap, the 1% will trickle in to search results except I’m not sure if this will advantage Yahoo since Google has the same access to the content.
Well, apparently, Yahoo’s service has already been trumped:
http://netrulin.../issue/view/365
(Depending on how you measure these things. . .)
I like this one. Yahoo on top of “Answers” Game. You see, you got to appreciate the effort, whoever (aol, yahoo, msn) puts in to stay in the web game. Afterall, its us who get the benefit. I congratulate Yahoo team to pull this off. Good luck to google. May be something bigger is in store. Can’t underestimate them.
I can’t sto thinking that Google Answers and Yahoo Answers are two DIFFERENT services, with different targets and users.
Even if they share their name and there are people answering, the similarities ends there. One is an expert service where you pay for reliable and good quality information. The second one is a people service where you get anything, from the silliest answer to the most detailed one.
To me, it’s like comparing Wikipedia and a forum.
The only problem is that the Google Answers target was unsuccessful. And that’s all. It’s good to reflect on that, but theres no “big win” to compare.
All this talk about the assumption that Google only “attracted” 800 people to answer questions is silly. Google limited the number of people answering questions because they ensured the answerers were qualified researchers. It was a closed group, and they hadn’t been accepting new applications for a while. Google Answers may have failed, but it was smaller than Yahoo BY DESIGN.
how about techcrunch to host an discusstion board to discuss the same business model but run by different companies? In fact, I do think someone would like that.
Are you freaking serious!? Yahoo’s service is for kids asking if they should talk to the guy they have a crush on. You could actually enlist deep research on Google Answers and get access to very obscure answers. Where are THOSE researchers going now? Not en masse to Yahoo I’m sure, as many used it to make their living. The difference in sites is vast, and its a real loss that Google has closed their deep-value site down.
I have my doubts that many Google Answers people will move to Yahoo! If I had done Google Answers, I would have done it for the money. Yahoo! offers no cash incentive at all.
Hi Michael,
It’s really impress me about your reply to Rick.
Manual Trackback!
http://www.touc...k-to-maths.html
When will Yahoo have the balls to kill all their duplicate services?
Considering Google had done essentially nothing to promote Google Answers, and that Yahoo! ran radio ads and Front Page advertising and placement, it’s no surprise that Google Answers didn’t go anywhere. I would saw that this was a war or battle. Google just didn’t show up because it wasn’t interested.
sorry to hear google answers closing down. I personally liked it very much. enough for the bad news. now the good news:
http://www.wuyaSea.com welcomes all google answer refugees.
WuyaSea.com allow you to ask question for free or for a fee (minimum $2). any category, any topic.
WuyaSea.com also allow you to answer any questions, our commission now is 20% + $0.20.
http://www.wuyaSea.com
wuyaSea Operator
All I can say is wow. I love Yahoo Answers. I personally think Yahoo has what it takes to come back, but it has yet to come up with a unified strategy for its multiple sites, a single design for its properties (single meaning a base look… it doesn’t have to have the same exact look or colors) and some sort of way of
Then again, take a look at this:
http://wii.yahoo.com
The Nintendo Wii site actually uses Yahoo propeties very well (except Yahoo Widgets)
I’m actually a bit surprised at Google’s action. Google Answers created a decent asset with very little promotion and would appear to be able to run nearly on auto-pilot.
The two services are so different, it’s hard to say Yahoo “won” anything here.
Even though Yahoo Answers is 99% crap, the 1% will trickle in to search results except I’m not sure if this will advantage Yahoo since Google has the same access to the content.
very good news!!
Berman Crazy Rant
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the majority of yahoo answers posts (the actual answers) are posted by kids.that’s why i don’t give yahoo answers any real confident votes.