Google Answers Shuts Down

Google has announced that it will shut down its 'Google Answers' service, in a bid to trim its expanding portfolio and shift focus to improving the products that have more potential. The Google answers service, which was launched in 2002, has competition from similar products by Yahoo!, Microsoft and Amazon.

Google Answers provided online answers to users' questions by offering contributions by a group of researchers, rather than offering algorithmic search results, as in the case of Google search engine. IT giant is planning on retaining the database of Q&A for its users but has already stopped accepting new questions. Google says it will stop accepting answers for the service by the end of 2006.