I’m not sure whether the stats prove an uncomplicated victory for social search and crowdsourced problem-solving, for a start. I’ve really no idea which service produces better answers, being one issue. It probably depends on the question. ‘What’s a good Italian restaurant in Cardiff?’ will work well with the Yahoo! model because it has a wider reach. On the other hand, you might not want to trust folk wisdom for a solution to matters that require a specialised knowledge.

It does show that a free-for-all, give-and-take knowledge source is very addictive and, presumably, helpful enough. Involving people like Stephen Hawking and Oprah Winfrey bought Yahoo! a vital share of attention Google never bothered with. Also, as Brady Forrest points out, Yahoo!’s model could scale organically, while Google’s required the recruitment and vetting of answerers, a time-consuming and distracting business.

Is this victory analagous to what will happen in the battle between the Wikipedia and the Britannica? It seems very similar on face value. Not entirely, though, since their business models are different: Wikipedia survives on charitable donations and drubbing the opposition when it comes to traffic is not nearly as helpful as it has been to Yahoo!

[I interviewed Steven Taylor, RVP of Yahoo! UK here, back in August and he talked a little about the Answers service]