At times like these, I wish I could pay a few bucks if an expert would READ MY QUESTION and give me an answer or a solution that’s right for my question, not just generic stuff available in Internet searches.

The demise of Google Answers was a big blow to us Google Answers fans. We know that some of the ex-Researchers started uClue but we felt that still something was missing. So a few of the ex-Google Answers fans researched different business models, picked the best parts of them and came up with da Gurus keeping the needs of the Seekers (askers) and the Gurus (Experts / Professionals / Researchers) in mind.

I can best compare it to eBay – where eBay is for products, da Gurus is for answers, solutions and services. I can post a question for free and then the Gurus (Experts / Professionals) on that website bid / quote their prices – I get the best price advantage and compare Guru profiles before selecting a winner. I pay only if I select a winner (based on the bid amount and the Guru profile) and accept the answer. I tried it a few times for my DIY projects on gardening, furniture, accounting and taxes. It is amazing. Here’s how it works – http://www.dagur.us/welcome.php

I thought of coming back and sharing it with the fellow die-hard Google Answers fans.

I won’t presume to speak for my colleagues, but I’ll bet they do, too. We threw ourselves heart, soul and sanity into Google Answers. We had fun, learned a lot, and made ourselves a family when Google wasn’t paying us any mind. It’s heartening to know that someone at HQ is actually possessed of some Give A Damn and integrity. Thanks again.

(Though I think you should probably not use the Soylent Green reference to praise someone, either. Have you watched the movie since you were a kid?)

I do agree that the project should have been either greenlighted – then supported and promoted to hell and gone to help it be successful – or done away with much much earlier. Taking us out of Beta if there was no intention of making it work was…well, it was wrong. As was treating us as completely expendable, and pretending right up to the very last day – hell, the very last hours! – before it was announced that we were gone that everything was a-okee-dokee. Lying to us was really not the way to do it.

The GARs and the service deserved better than that. I’m glad to see someone from Google acknowledging that there was a human cost.

Otis and Missy, I never meant any kind of disrespect to the Researchers; I was trying to compliment the caliber of the engineers who worked on Google Answers. I also know that the caliber of the GA researchers was phenomenal. My wife was a GA Researcher, so I was a fan of Google Answers and got to see both the engineering and the Researcher side of Answers from the early days of the project. My personal opinion is that a go/no-go decision should have been made much sooner (2003 or 2004), and that the delay in that decision had many repercussions for the Researchers and for Google Answers alike.

The answers, it appears are “About four and a half years, if the Researchers fight hard to promote it themselves” and “Around 500 Researchers, and hundreds of loyal customers”, respectively.

What WAS the experiment, Matt? This disappointed Guinea Pig would really like to know. I worked my ass off for Answers and for my customers, and my colleagues and I threw ourselves into trying to make the service the best it could be.

I can only echo Otis’ commentary about your use of the Soylent Green analogy. Dude, were you really intending to be so arrogant?

Consider how many losers there might be for any business winner. Too many factors are involved: a good product/service, financial resources to make it happen, market appeal and timing (often sheer luck), control of your own destiny, ad infintum.

Groups of smart people are no guarantee of success. Dozens of dotcoms went under even with rows of brains and talent at the oars.

Sometimes the issue of success isn’t about making MONEY, it’s about pleasing PEOPLE – an enormous group of devoted, loyal, well-meaning “people” who found a niche they’d been longing for. I find a bizarre irony in your statement that “Google’s biggest strengths is the same as Soylent Green”, a novel that surrounded the miseries of normal, helpless, working class people who, when they reached a certain age, were terminated by their overseer and recycled into foodstuffs for other seemingly superior replacements.

That was cold Matt….that was just cold.

Having said that, that’s a neat question and I’d like to know the answer to it too just for geek’s sake.