Google Questions and Answers is a free knowledge market offered by Google that allows users to collaboratively find good answers, through the web, to their questions (also referred as Google Knowledge Search). It was launched in June 28, 2007 and replaces the fee-based Google Answers service, discontinued on December 1, 2006. Google had chosen Russia as the first country to launch this new service.
Technologically, Google service most closely resembles analogous services by mail.ru, Naver and Yahoo!. It is pseudonymous: the nicknames of the authors of questions and answers are shown right next to their contributed content. Google uses question tagging to help users find relevant questions.
As most services of this kind, Google provides an incentive system to motivate people to answer questions. It is based on assigning points for actions and a system of levels loosely based on the Russian system of academic degrees. An interesting feature of the incentive system is that Google's reward for visiting is higher than for posting an answer.
On August 20, 2007, Google and Tianya Club, a Chinese community website, launched a free Q&A service entitled "Tianya Answers".
More languages were added, including English. The site is known as Google Baraza .
Read more about Google Questions And Answers: Predecessor, Future
Famous quotes containing the words questions and/or answers:
“All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed, but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)