This service involved Google staffers answering questions by e-mail for a flat fee (US$3.00).

It was fully functional for about 24 hours, after which it was shut down, possibly due to excessive demand and the tough competition that Yahoo!

[3] In late November 2006, Google reported that it planned to permanently shut down the service (except for the Hong Kong and Arabic versions).

[6] In an email sent to registered researchers announcing the closure, Google wrote: We considered many factors in reaching this difficult decision, and ultimately decided that the Answers community's limited size and other product considerations made it more effective for us to focus our efforts on other ways to help our users find information.

Researchers were not Google employees, but contractors that were required to complete an application process to be approved to answer for the site.

[11] Other reference librarians claimed that the service was not detrimental to libraries, but simply operated in parallel to them.

The official Google Answers policy was to remove questions that appeared to be school assignments.

However, some journalists expressed concerns that sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between a "legitimate" question and a homework assignment, especially in regard to sciences and programming.