"Later this week, we will stop accepting new questions in Google Answers, the very first project we worked on here. The project started with a rough idea from Larry Page, and a small 4-person team turned it into reality in less than 4 months. For two new grads, it was a crash course in building a scalable product, responding to customer requests, and discovering what questions are on people's minds," says the Official Google Blog (assuming it hasn't been hacked again).
This isn't a big surprise since Google Answers was an invitation to pay for an answer, whereas Yahoo Answers and Amazon's Askville (in beta) are free.
And with Yahoo doing so much marketing for Yahoo Answers, Google doesn't really want to look like an also-ran.
Update: Guardian Unlimited now has the story, Search engine runs out of Answers.
