At a more personal level, I have come to believe that planning can actually be dangerous because it convinces us that our guesses are right by sitting in the office and searching on Google for the answers.
The FTC hired outside lawyers to prepare a case, but after a lengthy investigation concluded what was obvious from the start: There was no case against Google's practice of delivering answers as well as just links in its search results.
Givler says he wrote the letter because managers at Google would give him canned or evasive answers to questions he and other publishers posed.
"Google did not provide any precise and effective answers, " CNIL said on Monday.
BBC: EU 'may take action' against Google over privacy policy
After launching the YouTube question and answers initiative, Mr Brown told Google's UK conference that technology was vital to cutting crime and in offering better access to education and healthcare.
And when it comes to producing unbiased answers, what's good for Google is good for users, he insists.
To provide answers that aren't already in Google's ever-expanding database, the company will blend new semantic-search technology with its current system to better recognize the value of information on websites and figure out which ones to show in search results.
Any European limits on Google could hamper the sweeping ambition that chief executive Larry Page has set for the company to turn itself from a search engine that primarily displays links to other sites into a "knowledge engine" that answers users' questions directly with information plucked from Google's own services.
Mr. Stricker added that Google shares these new companies' mission of providing more authoritative answers to questions for which there may not be a lot of content online currently, citing its real-time search services and a product called Knol, which allows people to upload information about topics on which they are experts, as examples.
WSJ: Quora and Others Are Racing to Fill Gaps Left by Google
The answers to the first two questions were found on a Google search (Pogue has written about his cars).
In fact, Ask's focus on answers isn't its first attempt to gain a competitive advantage against Google by methods other than improving its search algorithm.
"We're providing answers before you've even asked the question, " said Tamar Yehoshua, Google's director of product development.
Google estimates that the typical user spends nine seconds entering a query and 15 seconds looking for answers.
Answers and ran add-ons at Mozilla, and Paul Rademacher, who came into Google after doing the first mashups with Google Maps, and was something of an evangelist for the external developers working with Google products.
Google ( GOOG - news - people ) may be the go-to resource for quick answers, but Guinness World Records is still the gold standard.
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