Google Launches “Question and Answers” In Russia

Googling Google reports Google Russia has launched a Questions & Answers service in Russia.

Although Google closed down Google Answers late last year, this launch of Questions & Answers is a new flavor of such an application. To me, it looks more like a Google Groups approach than anything else.

Since everything is in Russian, it is hard to understand what exactly is going on. Google Blogoscoped tries to translate the features:

– You can ask questions and get answers from other users.
– You can earn points for answering questions and become an “expert” in subjects; better answers gain more points.
– You should label questions to make them easier to find. (What happened to Google’s world-class indexing algorithms?)
– Russia is the first country where this is being launched (which I guess means it may be rolled out to others in the long-term).
– You will be able to chat with “smart people”…

So will we see Question & Answers in America and other countries? It is possible. See also related coverage via Techmeme.

Postscript From Danny: More than expect this to come. At Google Press Day 2007, Google’s Marissa Mayer suggested that Google understands that a more human model is what’s needed to succeed in some countries:

To date we rely largely on automation….I actually think the right answer is a blend of both, to get the incredible scale that automation and operate on and have the human intelligence, particularly in Asia