AQA - Searching for Answers - European Web 2.0

Posted on August 29, 2006
Filed Under For Argument's Sake, European Web 2.0 |

AQA has been causing a bit of a stir over the past few days because it charges for answers to questions, sought via the mobile phone, and because its owners think web searching is a dying art.

“It’s a well known aspect of man and machine systems. Complex systems with no control fall over. Every example of it you can think of falls apart. With databases, data that isn’t pruned becomes overgrown.
Entropy sets in when complexity gets out of control.” that’s from an interview with AQA founder Colly Myers in The Register.

This information is also from The Register.

AQA served its 3 millionth answer recently, notching up the last million in four months. The previous million took seven months, and the first million took 19 months, which gives some indication of its growth ramp. AQA’s owner IssueBits has been profitable since last October, says Myers, and he thinks the market is young and there’s plenty of opportunity to grow. AQA doesn’t have the field to itself - 82ask also caters to the curious texter - but it is in pole position.Myers seems particularly proud of the infrastructure: AQA uses around 500 researchers to answer double the volume of queries it did before (the actual composition of the research staff varies, as they drop in and out of work).

Are Google’s glory days behind it? | The Register


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