Google Answers Rebirth From China

Written by Luyi Chen on August 20, 2007
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WendaBy the end of last year, Google shut down its paid Q&A service. Then in June, it rolled out a free answers service in Russia. Now the Chinese version of the service launched, under the domain of Tianya.

This is again a free service. Everything seems to be identical to the Russian version. By cooperating with Tianya, the service got 20M registered users at the starting point.

Besides the Gmail like interface, there’re several features I like.

When you post a new question, the service will show you similar questions on the right side. And the list is dynamic. You can change the title during writing the post, the right side question list and the suggested tags will change accordingly. But it seems content of the post won’t affect the suggestions. Google is really good at such kind of Ajax suggestions. It’s surely better than Baidu Zhidao, which gives a static one-time similar question list.

Users can subscribe to tags they are interested in. Baidu don’t have similar feature. Instead it has RSS. But sometimes inline subscription is useful than RSS because of application context.

You can login the system with Tianya account. The first time you use the service, it will give you a privacy alert that your IP information will be recorded for at least two months. And it will be available for authority on request. Is this the first time a Chinese service clearly notices users about a privacy policy?

8 Responses to “Google Answers Rebirth From China”

  1. Eric on August 20th, 2007 3:16 pm

    Do you know any more about the business relationship between Tianya and Google?

  2. Read/WriteWeb on August 20th, 2007 5:08 pm

    Google Launches Answers in China…

    Google China released a Q&A site, in partnership with Tianya Club. The Make Meaning blog notes that Tianya Club was founded in 1999 and is one of the most popular discussion forums in China. Tianya has almost 20 million registered……

  3. Luyi Chen on August 20th, 2007 6:26 pm

    Eric,

    There’s rumor about Google’s investment in Tianya. You have a long ear. But it’s not confirmed.

  4. VentureBeat » Roundup: Google invests in China/Tianya, gDrive, Pubmatic and more on August 21st, 2007 1:47 am

    [...] Google buys majority stake in China’s Tianya, launches Google Answers: Google has invested in Tianya (screenshot below), a Chinese online community of twenty million registered users that provides question-and-answer services. A Google spokesperson confirmed the investment with VentureBeat. Google will be providing the search for the company. Separately, Google-Tianya will competing against Baidu by offering a discussion board service called Laiba. More here. [...]

  5. Google: The East / West seesaw « Spare Cycles on August 22nd, 2007 12:58 am

    [...] China Web 2.0: Google Answers Rebirth From China [...]

  6. Google: la strategia cinese | Stalkk.ed on August 25th, 2007 1:06 am

    [...] Sempre VentureBeat, sull’investimento in Tianya riporta che: “Google tells us that both Tianya sites will be ‘powered by Google technology’ but ‘are Tianya services, not Google services’ — which could be a way for Google to have Tianya do the dirty work of censoring its Chinese users“. Ma Google Blogoscoped suggerisce anche che: “it’s easier for Google to operate the site as an alliance, rather than as a fully-fledged Google property as in Russia, because Tianya has an Internet Content Provider license“. E sullo specifico servizio Wenda, China Web2.0 Review aggiunge: “You can login the system with Tianya account. The first time you use the service, it will give you a privacy alert that your IP information will be recorded for at least two months. And it will be available for authority on request. Is this the first time a Chinese service clearly notices users about a privacy policy?“. [...]

  7. 98clouds » Blog Archive » Google Answers Rebirth From China on October 21st, 2007 9:09 am

    [...] from Administrator [...]

  8. rssevent » Blog Archive » Google Answers Rebirth From China on October 22nd, 2007 9:47 pm

    [...] click here to read [...]

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