Check out:
askville.amazon.com
and
newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?sto ...

"Google giveth and Google taketh away, so thank goodness, some would say, for Amazon. Today the book-selling giant launched Askville, an online service that lets users ask questions and get a response from other users, in lieu of posting query after query to one of the Web's many search engines. Google discontinued its own answer service, Google Answers, in November of last year."

Why did Google decide to shut down Google Answers instead of making it like the other ask and answer services out there?

They didn't care I guess.