Google discontinues Aadvark and some others

Aadvark, the popular Q & A service, better known as Vark.com is being shut down. Search giant, Google had only recently taken up the reins of Aadvark, in 2010. Recently, Google had announced the departure of Google Labs and along with it, many of its projects. Aadvark is one of the victims, along with some others such as Fast Flip, a news aggregator and Google Desktop, a desktop search application that was launched earlier in the decade. Google has decided to shut down many of these services and projects in order to focus on the bigger picture. Google had earlier also mentioned that some of these features might make their way into existing products.

No more questions and no more answers…

Of the 10 properties that were shut recently, Aadvark was one of the more popular ones. Aadvark competed directly with Quora, another popular Q & A site. It worked on the basis of users asking questions one-on-one. Quora’s approach is slightly different where users participate in discussions in a commenting system much like they do on Facebook. Some of the products Google shut were bought for large sums of money. Aadvark for example, cost Google roughly around $50 million, whereas the recently shut Slide was bought for close to $200 million. The teams behind these projects will continue working at Google towards some of their other efforts.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?