Wow. Google is shutting down its Google Answers service. The company has announced that new questions won’t be accepted after the New Year, though the site will continue to let people view the question archives. Killing off the service, which never seemed to catch on much, certainly will help Google seem like it is focusing efforts toward more needed areas. But it still feels like an odd, almost surrendering move in the face of Yahoo Answers being such a success.

Back in April, I did a long roundup on how answering services in general had never really caught on in terms of popularity. It covered how Google’s nearly four year old service generated practically no traffic for Google, plus looked at similar services that came and went.

But in June, I had to admit that my being dubious in terms of Yahoo Answers was off the mark. The service kept notching up tons of traffic, and Yahoo continues to put its weight behind it, to the point of even more integration last week of Yahoo Answers material into regular results.

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Many industry reports showed by the panelists concurred that as technology goes more mobile, so do more of the search population.

“The technology lends itself to much usage,” assures Herzog. “Entertainment and navigation traffic, real time predictive, and an emerging younger audience—all that leads to more and more daily usage.”

Local search especially lends itself well to mobile phones, explains McCabe. “When you ask people what are they searching for, it’s always something local. “Out of the top five, maps and directions, directory listings, nearby restaurants, stores, local movies, they’re all related to the local category. So we definitely see this as an important thing that people expect when they’re on a mobile phone.”

The same is true across all mobile devices—laptops, phones, and other devices that use WiFi services from a hotspot. “The advent of WiFi is going to change the roles a lot,” said Greg Gruse, senior VP of Content Services for Local Matters. “As municipalities (and places of business) start rolling out free WiFi services, things are going to change again. The power of that search box on that portal will be very important because that page, not your home page, will be the starting point for people when they connect to their municipal WiFi portal.”

“WiFi and these local portals are going to drive a need for much more detailed content information. This will be targeted content that will be based on a smaller area than what you’ve seen before.”

Gruse added that mobile devices will also be a great opportunity for social networking to add to the local content quality. “Features such as ’send-to-a-friend will be important to your new mobile web services, and this will also lead to more consumer generated content such as ratings, reviews, preferences, sharing of info between friends, and guides and trip planning type features for consumers on the go,” he said.

About the Author: Grant Crowell is the CEO and Creative Director of Grantastic Designs, Inc.

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  So it seems that good old Bobby Knight the hall of fame coach of the Texas Tech Red Raiders men’s basketball program was back to his roots again Monday night when they were playing Gardner-Webb in Lubbock, Texas. Coach Knight became famous for his hard work with the Indiana Hoosiers whom he led to great success over the years. He was famous for his intense/fierce competiness both on and of the coart. We have all probaby seen his temper flip during games in the past when he has been seen throwing chairs onto the court while the game was being played.

   Most of us whom follow men’s basketball all we starting to think that he was now a more relaxed coach but at the same time we were all just waiting for one of his outbusts to happen on TV again. Well we were all met with that thrill once again on Monday when during a Time Out call it seemed that Coach Knight slapped Michael Prince in the face, after the player walked of the court with his head hanging low. I have watched the video over and over today and I see nothing but a slap to a kids face, when Knight was asked about the incident he said he simply flipped him on his chin in order for his player to keep his head up.

   Michael Prince was asked about the situation and he and his parents backed up Coach Knight’s story so that makes me wonder was there some kind of agreement met between the school officials and the Prince family? Or could it simply be that the player was to scared to step forward and really say what he thought happened, could it be that he was thinking if he made a statement against Knight that this would have an effect on his playing time and the way the other players would look at him. Well people that is not for me to say I can only speculate about the whole situation. Personally I don’t think that we will ever find out, but what we can do it make a judgement call after watching the situation.

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