Google recently announced a new question answering service. There's lots of other search engines that offer similar functionality (Ask Jeeves for one), but they typically just show links to sites with potential answers. In contrast, google actually shows the answer itself with a link to websites that could provide additional information. According to an InfoWorld article:
Google feeds this service with information from Web sites it considers reliable, but it hasn't established formal relationships with any content provider whose information is being used for this feature, Norvig said. Google doesn't expect that the owners of the Web sites will complain over the possibility that this new service will steal traffic away from them, Norvig said. On the contrary, being featured at the top of Google's results list will give these Web sites great exposure, and will likely result in increased traffic, he said.
Seems to me that Google is dangerously close to some very serious content ownership issues. Based on the InfoWorld explanation, it sounds as if Google is taking proprietary, unauthorized, content from "reliable" sources and publishing it on its website in answer to users questions. While this probably isn't an issue for most fact based questions (e.g., what's the capital of California?), who determines what the cut-off is?
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