I am very reticent in singling out SDMB members for specific questions, but I hope I will be forgiven for this one.
Back in 2005-part of 2006, I regularly looked at a part of the Google website called Google Answers. I have been unable for some time to find this any more and suspect it is kaput.
Google Answers was shut down at the end of November 2006. Here is the official announcement of its death. I wish I knew more about the reasons behind the termination of this small, but interesting Google project. Google Answers Researchers were contractors, not employees. We were notified of the shutdown at the same time that the announcement was made to the public, and no additional details or explanations were given to us.
Thank you so much for the answer. It is much appreciated!
I guess I should add, by way of … well, whatever… it was a fascinating experiment in folk asking questions, and putting a money value for the correct answer, and the (uh…Google Answerers?) got that money for an acceptable answer. The $$ values went from … as best I remember … a few cents to $100 sometimes.
Just trying to add some value here for those viewing this.
Questions could be priced (by the questioner) from $2 to $200, of which 75% went to the Google Answers Researcher who posted the answer, and 25% to Google. If the question remained unanswered for 30 days, only a 50-cent listing fee was charged to the customer’s account.
Once the question was answered, the customer had the option of leaving a tip of up to $100. The full amount of the tip went into the Researcher’s pocket. Once I got a $100 tip on a $10 question! Ah, those were the good old days.
I’m not quite sure why this is in Cafe Society? Started as GQ (“What happened to…” with a factual answer) and now seems to be MPSIMS (“My experiences at work…”)
So, since there’s ambiguity, I’ll leave it here. I think this is called “resolution by indecision.”