alex.moskalyuk

Google Answers launched today for the Russian market, as announced in Google Russia blog by a product manager from Mountain View, so it looks like expansion to other languages is only the matter of time. The service is not entirely unlike a competing answers service from another Internet company in Silicon Valley, but does feature some Google-specific features, such as tagging and prominence of search (do a view image to see the full screenshot).

Every new user to the system starts off with 100 points, and can spend those points asking a question. The cost of the question can be 10, 20, 30, 50, 80 or 100 points. A daily login to the site will earn you 5 points, every answer to the question will earn you 2 points, and ever rating for a specific answer will earn you 1 point.

One can also specify the number of days before the question is considered closed. The values are 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 20, 30 with the default of 5 suggested. The best answer gets all the points paid by the user who asked that question, so there’s motivation in answering higher-priced questions first. If in process the answer gets high rating from other users, the author of the answer gets additional points. If the answer is “dugg down”, the author of the answer can lose points.

The sidebar links allow you to browse the questions you’ve asked, the answers you’ve submitted, the tags you’ve subscribed to (Google will probably call them labels in English UI), and the starred Q&A.