It seems Google is finally trying to cut through the clutter, by eliminating their Google Answers service. I agree with TechCrunch’s assumption that this is probably a service with little added value to them, in a time of ever nichefying social network sites, where people with specific questions can easily find their answers. And heck, didn’t ‘To Google’ become an official verb some time ago?

So far no word on how Yahoo Answers is doing in comparison but isn’t it possible that community asking services such as these will become extinct as people learn to better navigate the Web themselves?

Microsoft Live also offers a similar service, called Live QnA. The thing with all these answer sites is that so many of the replies are filled with links, both asker and answerer end up unsatisfied in their experience, just passing and clicking links all the time. After getting a link as an answer three times in a row, you go straight to the source, I would imagine.

But perhaps the reasoning was different. Google Answers is different from Yahoo Answers or Live QnA because it acts as a sort of a market place for people needing research done, and people offering their time, at an agreed upon price for the effort. In that sense, it’s perhaps closer in it’s ambition to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, which also acts as an intermediary for time-consuming jobs like processing mortgage application forms.

My take is that Answers has potential, but lacks the scalabiltiy -in Google terms no easy feat. But perhaps an opportunity for Amazon to expand their Mechanical Turk service, and lower the threshold for search/administrative jobs to be included?  Right now, it comes off as a bit too complex at first glance on how to set up a job (or HIT, a Human Intelligence Task).