What happened to Google Answers?

Question

I was browsing around Google recently, and I found a link to Google Answers. Now I didn't even know there was a Google Answers, but when I clicked the home button, I got this:
Does anybody know why Google did away with this? Granted, with SE, there probably isn't much use for me to use it, but I feel like it might have been a nice alternative to Yahoo Answers

Answer 1

Google Answers shut down about 5 years back. As stated in the official Adieu to Google Answers -

Google is a company fueled by innovation, which to us means trying lots of new things all the time -- and sometimes it means reconsidering our goals for a product. Later this week, we will stop accepting new questions in Google Answers, the very first project we worked on here. 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. 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.

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Google Answers was a great experiment which provided us with a lot of material for developing future products to serve our users. We'll continue to look for new ways to improve the search experience and to connect people to the information they want.

As you can see, Answers was just an experiment. A way to test their methods of building products. It was never meant to be ever lasting.

Answer 2

Google Answers got shut down years ago. The Questions and answers that were posted by users before the shut-down are still visible to everyone on the net but no one can add a question or answer an existing answer - as it's shut down.

Google never gave an official reply to why the service was shut down, but there do are many speculations related to it. You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Answers#Closing_of_the_service