14 DAY TRIAL // Google isn’t wasting too much time putting one of its latest acquisitions to work. The search giant bought Aardvark, an interesting Q&A service, a couple of months ago for a reported $50 million. It made it available shortly after in Google Labs, but no one expected to see too much happening around the startup for a while. While Google hasn’t actually done anything with the service itself, it is now promoting it on the YouTube help pages, offering users an alternative way of getting answers.
“Give Aardvark a try! Can't find what you're looking for here? Let Aardvark find an expert to answer,” is everything the message says, but the simple fact that Google is featuring it prominently on the help pages of one of its biggest properties, shows that it wants the Q&A service to succeed. That may seem like a no-brainer, why else would have Google acquired it, but there are plenty of cases where a service has been left to die after being bought by the giant company.
Google does a lot of ‘acqu-hires,’ buying companies solely for their talented teams. Most of its latest acquisitions have been just like that, with the small companies shutting down or de-emphasizing their own products or services to start working on one of Google’s existing products. It did this with its latest buy in its expanding shopping spree, the UK startup Plink and plenty others in the past.
With Aardvark it’s different. Google hasn’t made any modifications to the service itself and it’s probably not planning to in the short term, but it may be working to integrate it with some of its existing products. Featuring it on the company’s help pages makes a lot of sense, Aardvark is a great way of getting help, after all. And Google doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to its support services anyway, so it could use all the help it can get. [via TechCrunch]