(or not) and if they did accept the offer, answer the question.
Along with well-heeled high school and college students, I was a big fan of the site. Answers were usually complete, well researched, and well written. But quality isn't always rewarded on the Internet. Google just couldn't compete with Yahoo Answers, a free service that relied not on paying customers, but on a mammoth and loyal Yahoo community. Google's official Google Answers response to the question "What has happened to Answers?" is "There is no answer at this time." Google may not be accepting your questions, but you can still search the database of answers.
Google Coupons: Expires 2006
It almost seems as if Google Coupons is Google's equivalent to a white rhino--they both exist but few have seen one. Google Coupons is a feature within the Google Local Business Center service that allows companies to create Web-based coupons and display them within Google Maps.
The idea behind Google Coupons is that when you are searching for a local business using Google Maps, a local company can deliver a coupon enticing you to do business with it. The coupon would be displayed next to the Google Map and could be printed out and redeemed.
It's a nifty idea, but as an avid user of Google Maps, in the two years Google Coupons has been available I've never come across one when using a map. Have you?
Google Hangs Up On Google Voice Search
From the Google department of way-before-its time came Google Voice Search. The service, which was originally an experiment within Google Labs, was launched in 2003 and worked like this. First, visit the Google Voice Search site. Next, call the phone number on the screen and speak your keyword search query. Then go back to your browser, click on the link on the Google Voice Search site, and bingo, a window with the search results appears.
No wonder this service got nixed. Searching the Web like this is comparable to calling up your brother-in-law to drive across town and brush your teeth for you before you go to bed. On the other hand, this cool technology experiment was a precursor to mobile phone services of today such as ChaCha and Google's own, very handy Google 411 service.
Google Viewer: I'm Not Seeing It
The idea behind the Google Viewer software program was that you could type in a query, press submit, and then sit back and watch as it loaded actual Web pages that it found. Next, Google Viewer displayed the results to you as a slide show. The program, which PC World reported on in 2002, was eventually abandoned.
The idea of sneaking a peak at a Web page before clicking on the link eventually came to fruition--it just didn't require a software download to do it. Today you can preview pages in search results delivered by Ask.com, Powerset, and Yahoo, no application required.
eBay Users Check In, But They Don't (Google) Checkout
In June 2007 thousands of eBay loyalists descended on Boston for eBay's annual sellers convention. And in hopes of promoting its new Google Checkout payment system--which would be competing directly with eBay's Paypal subsidiary--Google organized a party to be held during the eBay show, inviting eBay sellers to attend. In addition, the Google party was supposed to be a protest against eBay for barring merchants from using Google Checkout.
When eBay got wind of Google's plan, it promptly cancelled all of its U.S. ads running on the search engine for more than a week. At the time, eBay was the single largest buyer of search ads on Google.
Google cancelled its Boston tea party.
Orkut: The Hoff of Social Networks
Actor David Hasselhoff is worshipped in Germany, but his talents are less appreciated here in the United States. The same might be said of the domestically underappreciated Google Orkut. Introduced in 2004, the social networking site is a big hit in Brazil, but in the U.S., Orkut has lagged in
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