Friday, February 12, 2010

Google Acquires Q&A Site Aardvark

As TechCrunch reported, Google acquired social question and answer site Aardvark (vark.com). TechCrunch says the acquisition price was “around $50 million”. At Vark.com, you can sign up, specify your location and three required topics of your expertise, to then be able to ask questions and answer questions related to your expertise. The site was co-founded by ex-Google employees and is quite straightforward and easy to use.

Anyone want to speculate on what motivated Google to aquire them? From a report by Vark: “As of October 2009, Aardvark had 90,361 users, of whom 55.9% had created content (asked or answered a question). The site’s average query volume was 3,167.2 questions per day, with the median active user asking 3.1 questions per month. Interestingly, mobile users are more active than desktop users. The Aardvark team attributes this to users wanting quick, short answers on their phones without having to dig for anything.”

Yesterday at Vark, I asked “Why did Google acquire Aardvark?” These are two of the three answers which came in:

• Michael: their well publicized sinister plot for world domination - i thought everyone knew that
• Adam, with a link: “Possibly to integrate into Buzz. They used to have a Q&A service. Q&A services are good money. Lots of ad views.”

[Thanks DPic!]

Google Acquires Q&A Site ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (12+8)

>> More posts

Advertisement