Yesterday, Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) said that it was dismantling Google Answers. Google Answers has been running as a paid feature for four years. Google will leave the site running but will no longer take questions.

Of course, this immediately raised speculations that Google Answers simply could not compete with the highly successful, barely one-year-old similar service from Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) -- the free Yahoo! Answers. Yahoo! Answers has roughly 60 million unique users and more than 160 million answers.

Google has long been criticized on the lack of depth in its services. Google relies on search advertising revenue almost solely. The search giant lacks vertical depths, some say, while Yahoo! has many very successful services other than search. Google doesn't have the community of users Yahoo! has, and while Google is mainly viewed as an Internet search company, Yahoo! is perceived as an Internet media company.

The success of Yahoo! Answers and the failure of Google Answers only serve to prove that point. The approaches to the service were vastly different, each company relying on its strength. Google with a technical, systematic approach, Yahoo with a more people oriented approach.

I've said before that I've heard this idea somewhere - maybe Yahoo! should concede search to Google. After all, what difference does it make if so many searches in Google eventually point to pages in Yahoo?

Of course, share price have reflected the ability of the companies to monetize their respective businesses with GOOG climbing above $500, while YHOO at $26.80 is off more than 31% YTD. This is where Yahoo! should concentrate its efforts - monetizing its existing properties. Google? Well, throwing the towel every once in a while isn't so bad and shows the company knows its own strengths and weaknesses.

Google seems to consistently steal the spotlight from competitor Yahoo! these days. At least Yahoo! has a comeuppance every once in a while. Yahoo! Answers appears to be one of the few shining lights these days, as it is the second most popular Internet Q&A site behind Wikipedia.

This is no small matter, as Yahoo! Answers handles 12.3 million monthly visitors -- customers looking for research and answers on probably every imaginable topic. Too bad Yahoo!'s next-generation "Panama" advertising platform is not sitting alongside the Yahoo! Answers website these days -- but it will be shortly.

For perspective, try this on for size: Media sensation YouTube had 13.4 million visitors in June, and during the same period, 947,000 people clicked on Google Answers, down 4 percent from May. Yahoo! Answers, when stacked against these numbers, starts to look pretty impressive from a monthly visitor standpoint, yes?

"Yahoo has been rapidly losing market share in search to Google," says Jim Friedland, senior Internet analyst with Cowen & Co., "so this is a clever way to get people to interact with the site." I agree with this statement -- if you can't beat Google at search, there are other ways to get eyeballs on your web property -- and make money from the interaction. Yahoo! just needs to find more of them.

What can you ask at Google Answers? You can ask about the history of France, how Spam was invented or who Pilates was. Just don't pose a question about Google -- the company -- itself. Why? Because Google Answers is staffed by non-Google employees. This should come as no surprise to anyone -- it's just a way to keep the brand that is Google on the tips of customer tongues at all times.

In a world where Google seems to keep tight reign on all its web-based products and web properties, why would they outsource Google Answers? Simple -- they're providing a service that's non-core (but brand-building) to the overall Google strategy (I think) and taking a cut of each answer provided. Oh yeah, Google Answers costs money, unlike most other Google web offerings.

It appears to me that Google Answers are provided to those who have more money than time (and time is the most valued commodity, is it not?), since my guess is that the independent contractors who service customers at Google Answers probably use Google's search engine to find answers to customer's questions. Pretty interesting guess (and situation), but I'll be that is how is plays out. I would be curious to see if Google makes a decent profit with this service -- which probably costs them nothing. But, a 10% or 15% commission on each $2.50 query -- times possibly millions of queries per day -- would be a nice addition to Google's coffers.