Google never ceases to amaze me. The last few days I’ve discovered Google Maps, which is just a fantastically cool site that lets you look at satelite photos from around the world. I had fun looking up all sorts of places the other day. Check out my cool finds over at the NYRA Forums.

Its just quite easy to use, the zoom is fairly smooth, has great resolution, and best yet, its free and you don’t have to download anything. I love maps, so this is a great way to waste some time.

Today though I found another crazily awesome venture Google has thrown themselves into. So often those who compare the Internet to libraries are met with the retort that libraries will always win out because they have librarians. Trained professionals who devote themselves to helping you out and answering your questions (or telling you were to find the answer). Google has responded to the challenge.

Google Answers is a fantastic looking service by Google. People can submit a question on any topic and of any complexity and Google researchers will find an answer for you — for a price. As the question asker, you can set a price you are willing to pay for the answer to your question. When someone from Google gets you an answer, you pay the amount.

What is interesting though is that if ask a particularly difficult or complex question, and set a low price, Google probably won’t answer it. Or will put it quite low on their priority list. So amazingly, those with harder questions have paid up to $200 for answers. Most of the high dollar questions are from businesses doing market research or something. Google has become a business consultant.

How amazingly cool.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 23rd, 2005 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.