How to Take Over a Niche as a Known Expert
Did Google answers screw up? Their service was arguably more professional, but you had to pay.?

Google Answers has shut down. They provided superior service, with answers coming from experts who really knew what they were talking about. But you had to pay. It did not work well enough to continue. So Yahoo Answers has taken over the niche. How could such a big successful company as Google blow it?

I never used Google Answers but I did read an article from them explaining why it was closed….

All the answers were answered by experts like you said and when answered the people were paid indirectly by the person asking the question.

BUT MANY people when they got their answer could report that they did NOT like the answer and get a refund.
This was Googles policy, that if you did not like the answer you got a refund.(Sounds fair) BUT……

So MANY people were ABUSING the system and Google was forced to give so MANY refunds they found it wasn’t profitable and closed it.

(SO MANY PEOPLE ABUSED THE SYSTEM AND GOT THEIR ANSWERS FOR FREE THAT GOOGLE CLOSED IT)

(EDIT)
I also forgot to mention that SO MANY of the experts that were answering got tired of making refunds and basicly answering for free when they were promised by Google to be paied for their time and effort.
MANY JUST QUIT ANSWERING because MANY were already Internet researchers that could make money elsewhere looking up answers for people.