Google acquires Aardvark

Google acquires Aardvark

From the Official Google Blog -

When you need an answer to a very specific question, sometimes the information just isn’t online in one simple place. For example, let’s say you want to know if there’s snow on Skyline Boulevard on a given day or the best time of year to plant beans in the Bay Area. You might find weather reports and planting guides on many different sites, but for these kinds of questions, a person with the right expertise can be a lot more useful than a webpage.

That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’ve acquired Aardvark, a unique technology company that lets you quickly and easily tap into the knowledge and experience of your friends and extended network of contacts. Aardvark analyzes questions to determine what they’re about and then matches each question to people with relevant knowledge and interests to give you an answer quickly.

We’re very impressed with the Aardvark team and the technology they’ve worked hard to build, and we’re looking forward to collaborating to see where we can take it. You can learn more about Aardvark’s underlying technology and premise by reading this paper recently co-authored by founder Damon Horowitz.

In the meantime, Aardvark is available today in Google Labs, so give it try!

More on Aardvark

From The Aardvark Blog -

We’re thrilled to announce that Aardvark has been acquired by Google!

Aardvark has defined a new kind of social search: sometimes you want a person, not a web page, to answer your question. We’re extremely excited that Google shares our vision for how search can continue to evolve by including social features.

We have spent the past two years carefully designing and building Aardvark, combining our own vision with a rigorous user-driven development process. This acquisition represents an incredible opportunity to accelerate this development, working with some of the most amazing folks in the industry to offer a new kind of search to hundreds of millions of people.

As a first step, effective immediately, Aardvark will be available through Google Labs. Aardvark will remain fully operational and completely free, providing quick, helpful answers to all of your questions. You can sign up here.

As we move forward, we will continue working on Aardvark : improving its speed and quality, building exciting new features, responding to your feedback, and providing the highest level of support.  Our top priority has been, and remains, providing a high-quality user experience.

We want to thank our great investors and advisors for helping make Aardvark a reality.  And most of all, a big thank you to all the Aardvark users, for your incredible feedback and support. We’re honored by your participation in the social search revolution, and we’ll continue working hard to earn it.

We’ve put together a brief FAQ below to answer questions for our users and the press about the acquisition.

Onwards and varkwards!

- Max & Damon

Q: What is Aardvark
A: Aardvark is social search: ask any question and Aardvark will discover the perfect person in your network to answer in minutes.  Aardvark launched a private beta in March, 2009, and has been growing rapidly since.  Today people use Aardvark via vark.com, the Aardvark iPhone App, IM and email.  Over the past few months Aardvark has had amazing reception by the industry and press, appearing in the New York Times, Time’s 50 Best Websites of 2009, TechCrunch, and winning runner-up as the Best New Product or Startup of 2009 at the Crunchies awards.  Read more on our press page.

Q: Who’s building Aardvark?
A: The Aardvark Team is composed of about 30 people, with some of the best engineers and researchers in the industry.  The team includes engineers from each of Silicon Valley’s major technology companies, four AI Ph.D.s, and founders from a dozen different successful startups.

Q: Why is Aardvark excited about joining Google?
A: We want social search  to reach hundreds of millions people around the world, and joining with Google lets us reach that scale — we’re also excited to work with the team at Google: our company has a culture that was inspired by Google in many ways, and we have a lot of respect for the folks who work there.

Q: Will Aardvark keep running?
A: Yes!  Aardvark will keep running and improving on a daily basis — over IM and email, on the Aardvark Mobile iPhone app, and on vark.com.  Go ahead and ask a question just to make sure

Q: What will happen to my Aardvark account?
A: It will keep working just as it does today.

Q: Can I still sign up for a new Aardvark account?
A: Yes!  You can sign up here.  Sign up is easy and quick, especially if you use your Google account to import your profile!

Q: Are you going to keep working on improving Aardvark?
A: Absolutely.  You can expect us to keep introducing new features, fixing bugs, and improving the speed and quality of the service.

Q: What’s going to change about Aardvark?
A: The main thing that’s going to change is that we’ll be able to move even faster with the support of Google.

Q: Are my questions and answers going to show up on Google Search?
A:  As always, your questions and answers are private by default, unless you choose to share them with your friends.  Your questions and answers will show up in search results from Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search results if you choose to share them publicly.  For more info about Google’s privacy policy, visit www.google.com/privacy.

Q: What’s going to happen to the Aardvark Team?
A: The Aardvark team will continue working together within Google, and we’re also excited to have other Google folks joining the team as we move forward. We’ll be primarily working on improving Aardvark and exploring ways to improve social features in other Google products.

Q: How can I apply to work/intern at Aardvark now that we’re at Google?
A: Aardvark recruiting is now a part of the Google recruiting process — you can apply to work on Aardvark within Google!  If you’re interested in joining our team, please email us.

Q: What does ‘varkwards’ mean?
A:  http://vark.com/t/78a112

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