If it is showing up for you, it is located between Groups and Knol on Google’s "More Google Products" page:

According to Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land, Google Guru is a product that was launched in Russia back in 2007. While here in the U.S., the link pointing to Google Guru goes nowhere, the Russian link Schwartz provides goes to something that looks like this:

It’s basically a question and answers site. "What is interesting is that Google closed down their Google Answers site back in November 2006, yes over three years ago," says Schwartz. "Is Google Guru their way of getting back into the social Q&A space? Yahoo is dominate right now with Yahoo Answers, maybe Google feels they can make a run at that as well?"

Apparently not everyone is seeing the link to Google Guru at this point, and Google hasn’t at this time made any announcements about it that we are aware of. I expect that will change soon enough. Are you seeing the link?

Related Articles:

> Google Reportedly Considering Yelp Acquisition

> Google’s Blogger Adds Amazon Affiliate Monetization Option

> Google Puts Universal Search in Suggestions, Launches Quick Scroll

According to a rough translation from Google’s official Russian blog, the Mountain View-based company stated, “We are particularly pleased to announce that Russia – the world’s first country where we are launching this service; It is not even available for English language users.”

This isn’t quite the same old Google Answers, however – the words “new” and “beta” are used in the blog entry, and it appears that the service’s name is actually Google Questions and Answers.

Furthermore, Tony Ruscoe notes on Google Blogoscoped, “Nowhere does the announcement mention paying for answers, which was the basis for the old Google Answers site.  Instead, it’s free to ask questions, like at Yahoo! Answers.”  That may make the new Google site more competitive than its predecessor.

“However,” Ruscoe continues, “when asking a question, you must specify how many points you wish to spend on asking the question – and you must have these points available.  Presumably, these points then get awarded to the best answer.”

As determined by Alex Moskalyuk, users can also get points by simply logging in on a daily basis.

Although no official plans have been announced, we can probably expect this reincarnated Google Answers to show up in the US soon enough; more options are nice to have, so we’ll welcome it with open arms.  If you see ol’ Rasputin, though, a better option would be to run away.

Why is Google shutting down Answers? Given their huge number of servers and the low usage of Answers, Google could have kept it up practically for free, so the only reason I can think of: Google is sending a message. Closing down Answers, a losing project that was started with an idea by founder Larry Page, Google is telling its employees that any of their projects can be killed, no matter what. It’s a great call, and may have a positive impact on the projects Google engineers come up with.

What made Google Answers a failure? Yahoo Answers. Yahoo’s product is about a year old, and has 50 times the market share of the four-year-old Google Answers. Hell, Microsoft’s lesser-known Windows Live QnA, which went public only in September, was tracking to beat Google by early next year (and sooner now, obviously). Hitwise shows off the traffic stats.

Philipp wonders if Google is incapable of creating successful community sites. I’d say that, with the exception of Orkut (and even that is mostly in Brazil), Google just can’t match Yahoo’s success with creating communities. That’s why Google had to buy YouTube, and we’ll all be watching to see if they don’t screw that one up. Hopefully Yahoo keeps playing to its strengths, and release more sites like Answers that take advantage of its large userbase and grow large communities.

Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.

"Doctor Jones? Adieu."
The villain bids Indy goodbye, Raiders of the Lost Ark

Andrew Fikes and Lexi Baugher, software engineers who worked on Google Answers, had to bid adieu to their project. The site will no longer accept new questions, and by the end of the year will stop taking new answers.

Google Answers never caught on beyond a small core of users, who would pay for answers to their questions. Like many of Google’s secondary projects, Answers was never heavily promoted.

Those two areas stand in stark contrast to Yahoo! Answers, which Yahoo offers for free. That effort has gained a tremendous amount of participation, though much of the sillier questions and answers do make it look like a glorified Usenet in practice.

Google attempted to make its Answers a viable choice for people seeking answers from the variety of users available through the project. More than 800 users over the years participated and delivered their responses to a variety of questions.

“The project started with a rough idea from Larry Page, and a small 4-person team turned it into reality in less than 4 months,” the engineers wrote. “For two new grads, it was a crash course in building a scalable product, responding to customer requests, and discovering what questions are on people’s minds.”

The pay-for-answers model probably doomed the project, especially since so many questions can be answered through a free Google search. Or Yahoo search, or Ask search, or even MSN/Live search. Google Answers needed a greater number of participants, but for-pay always has a tough time competing with free.

—
Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.