My guess is that Google Answers doesn’t fit well enough into Google's core portfolio. An automatic answers system is more their style, no humans required, they will be back with this.

My guess is that Google Answers doesn’t fit well enough into Google's core portfolio. An automatic answers system is more their style, no humans required, they will be back with this.

hmm...maybe like an "I'm feeling lucky" one-line answer to all searches at the top of SERPs?

ie:
Search query: what is the capital of the USA?
SERP top line (spit out from Google): Washington D.C.
below that..."normal" listings.

or Q&A type answer direct knowledge search system? (ahem)

once again...
been there. done that. Welcome to korea.

>> My guess is that Google Answers doesn’t fit well enough into Google's core portfolio. An automatic answers system is more their style, no humans required, they will be back with this.

it is automated: no, or very few, google employees were harmed while answering :-)

The problem with google is that they cannot concentrate on one business/industry or even similer ones.

Adsense is not longer the gold mine for publishers. Adwords has so many problems for advertisers. Google groups are full of spam (that's naturally). The only thing that still work fine is the searching engine (well, I am trying to be nice here. Even the searching engine is a mess).

As we say in my country "Have two minds, and you would be a lier. Have three and you would be a hypocrate!".

Cheers