Google Baraza

http://www.google.com/baraza/en/

by pathikrit • 13 years ago

100 63 13 years ago

google.com

r0h1n2• 13 years ago

What am I missing? Is this Google Answers under a new name?

AndrewDucker• 13 years ago

An answer to the question "What is Google Baraza?":

http://www.google.com/baraza/en/thread?tid=3084c339e2379cf8

diggan• 13 years ago

"What is Google Baraza?"

"I am a member of the Google Baraza team. One of Google’s goals in Africa is to make the internet more locally relevant and bring more people online. One of the challenges of the internet in Africa is that there is a lack of local content online. At Google, we find that users search for information about local businesses, entertainment, health, etc but often don’t find it because the information is not yet available online. In order to help bring more local content online, Google engineers have created Baraza to allow people in countries across Africa to ask questions and post answers to questions from others.

Here are some quick tasks to try out

- Answer a question on your favorite topic - Find a question by browsing labels (e.g.,"Programming & Design") or Search (e.g., "Economics")

- Ask a question that you have been wondering about [...]" http://www.google.com/baraza/en/thread?tid=3084c339e2379cf8

r0h1n2• 13 years ago

So, minus all the lofty goals, this is Google Answers for Africa.

I'd be interested to know what Q&A services Africans already use.

aray• 13 years ago

Also notably, the answer linked is from October 2010, so this has been in use for a while.

joelrunyon4• 13 years ago

Are any of these Africa-specific pieces?

Just a few of the questions I picked off:

What is the meaning of stonehenge?
What is public enlightenment?
Is politics vicious?

Are these answers necessarily local to Africa?

yati• 13 years ago

Why, you think Africans won't be interested in answers to those?

patrickaljord• 13 years ago

What is the meaning of stonehenge?

That's probably a joke http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbyzgeee2mg

RivieraKid• 13 years ago

Why should Africans use this instead of existing Q/A sites like Quora?

shadowmint• 13 years ago

Perhaps the french version? http://www.google.com/baraza/fr/

simonv3• 13 years ago

A lot of website use appeals when it has a local flavor. Quora and it's Silicon Valley answerers probably doesn't know how to answer the questions that many Non-US citizens might have. This has a lot to do with user base, and I don't see Quora marketing itself outside of America.

NicoJuicy2• 13 years ago

Bandwith measures seems to be important, local infrastructure (lower ping), text-based access, ... many things to think of.

AYBABTME• 13 years ago

I don't understand why Quora seems to be a standard to some. It hides it's answers behind a registration wall and ask that you give it access to your Facebook profile on registration.

It's a creepy website from my perspective.

NicoJuicy2• 13 years ago

I'm curious what modifications you made to Baraza for making it more available in Africa?

I assume low-bandwidth measures are taking into account (text-only, sms access seems to be popular in Africa, weird addresses (more like orientation vs. popular landmarks, ...).. Could you give us more details about those changes? Those decisions really interests me...

ekianjo• 13 years ago

Where are the points coming from ? I seem to have 24 points while I never used this service. How about you ?

adrianb• 13 years ago

The 24 points seem to be the "initial sign-up bonus" and a "daily login bonus". I got my initial bonus in 2011 it seems, so this must be an older Google service that was just renamed and re-launched.

crb• 13 years ago

Note: this URL will be 404 if you're using an "https everywhere" extension. Revert to http:// URLs and it will work.

OrwellianChild• 13 years ago

This looks like an attempt to mimic the Quora or StackOverflow format of Q&A, but the structure isn't there. There doesn't seem to be much organizational structure beyond the top-level "Government" or "Computer Software" categories. It appears to have been around since 2010 or so - there are some users that have been contributing for a while (e.g. ivan - http://www.google.com/baraza/en/user?clk=tpct&userid=0708787...).

What is the purpose of recreating English-language Q&A structure in such a poor form?

wodenokoto• 13 years ago

Gathering question answer pairs for training their answering algorithm in google search.

KiwiCoder• 13 years ago

Question for the Baraza team: The framework looks good, and I expect the engineering behind the scenes is impressive. What are your thoughts about content curation and acquiring a critical mass of (for want of a better term) moderators?

See (for example) this question and its answers http://www.google.com/baraza/en/thread?tid=618ce3dee8dafc67

ronilan• 13 years ago

That's new. /s

(http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2010-11-16-n46.html)

thomasfl• 13 years ago

Will Baraza questions and answers be ranked higher than Quora and Stack Overflow in Google search? When Google starts adding more services with content created by users, will it be harder to rely on Google search?

joelrunyon4• 13 years ago

This is a good question.

At one point is google "impartial" search engine or when does it become a funnel to their own services?

You can see it started to happen with the ITA flight software acquisition a few years back (http://www.google.com/press/ita/) - now google flights now beat out every booking engine for any flight query.

lopatin2• 13 years ago

I doubt that Google will ruin the integrity of their search results because they want to push Baraza.

They do have widgets such as Google Flights pop up when it is clear the user if looking for airline tickets but that's not an indication that Google funnels all their own services for the heck of it. First of all, the widgets such as Flights and People Bios are not in the actual search results, but appear as separate sections. I believe the actual search results are sacred and are exempt from being tampered with, even for Google's motives.

Second, flights are a very specific and objective thing which makes their Flights widget extremely useful. If I'm searching for "flights from lax to ord", I'm going to get all flight times available without even leaving Google. The same cannot be said for most services such as Baraza, where the quality of answers/questions is very incomplete and subjective.

srikrishnan2• 13 years ago

The fact that 3 years after it was started, most of us still don't know of it means Baraza questions are clearly not ranked higher than other results :)

ianleckey• 13 years ago

404

selectnull2• 13 years ago

How come Google releases new software that is not using https, and still I'm logged in with my account.

I'm surprised google can still make that mistake, making my account vulerable after going to so much trouble of protecting it with 2factor auth.

srikrishnan2• 13 years ago

Well, I see the same news (on Google Baraza) has been doing rounds on HN since 2010 :D. So its definitely not new software.

giergirey2• 13 years ago

Are you sure that the Google authentication token(s) sent over HTTP can actually be used to perform sensitive actions (e.g. reading/sending mail, changing settings)?

That is, perhaps Google require an HTTPS-only token for sensitive actions and the authentication token sent over HTTP is only used for basic personalization (like showing your username) and some unimportant actions?

Though I guess we know that someone who has stolen your HTTP authentication token could ask embarrassing baraza questions on your behalf ...

selectnull2• 13 years ago

No, I'm not sure and your questions are valid. But wouldn't you be happier if they used https and the questions wouldn't have to be asked in the first place?

This practice of having a website respond to both http and https simply has to die. Google is not the only offender here, but I expected more from them, because they are very security sensitive.

Google, next time you accuse Chinese of hacking you, reconsider your practices.

paulgb• 13 years ago

YouTube defaults to HTTP as well. The security threat is pretty minimal, but an evil captive portal could sneakily grab your signed-in Google email if they wanted to.

aashu_dwivedi• 13 years ago

Is it because Quora's questions are behind the walled gardens?

xmpir• 13 years ago

http://www.google.com/baraza/en/thread?tid=6551f90c5ef62dc2&...

vinight• 13 years ago

I highly doubt this is a serious product google will be pursuing. looks like a low level offering for developing countries/markets

nthnclrk• 13 years ago

To me, I actually see this as Google crowdsourcing the data necessary to have "answers" appear rather than search results for those things that make sense to.

eniacpx• 13 years ago

I was thinking more along the lines of upping their game against Siri.

jonahx• 13 years ago

It looks like a row-rent version of SO, targeted at Africa.

The muffin stump of Q&A software: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eipl17WpOo&t=12

dhlavaty• 13 years ago

They shut down Google Reader, because it is "....unuseful" ?!? And now they launch Google Baraza, because it is ... what ????

lcasela• 13 years ago

Google Baraza was launched in 2010.

CmonDev• 13 years ago

Don't want to log in, sorry. See no point for them to see my account if I want to use the thing in view mode.

MichaelTieso• 13 years ago

Without proper moderation, it's going to be filled with junk.

oxes• 13 years ago

Wow that is ugly.

arikrak• 13 years ago

It looks like Google Forums but with StackOverflow-style votes. I guess they didn't really use aardVark for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark_(search_engine). I wonder why they didn't try to make a bigger Q&A service, maybe integrated with G+.

niuzeta2• 13 years ago

I don't know which I feel sadder: that I'm logged in a service which I did not agree for, or that I've lost will to try out anything from Google.

the NSA deal and (more importantly) Google Reader shutdown really did it to me. As soon as I find an alternative to gmail I'm leaving Google service wholly.

Zhenya• 13 years ago

I hope you figure out a way to ensure that service doesn't also shutdown. Just because you pay for it, doesn't make it invincible.

I think you're mad at SaaS, not Google. I don't see the shutting down a CORE offering anytime soon.

niuzeta2• 13 years ago

I know I'm mad for irrational reasons. I think you are right that I'm mad at SaaS as well.

Yes, services shut down. That's just the way it is, or at least how I figure.

The thing about Google Reader was that it was one of the reasons that got me interested in Google other than the search engine; then I discovered gmail, and etc. I've felt that Google was one of the 'good guys', and lately, I just don't feel the same way. I guess I'm quoting the Google Reader shutdown as what symbolizes the change.

Having said that, I doubt I will try many things from Google, not because of the fear of them shutting down, but because it won't do much for me.

pornel• 13 years ago

Baraza is not supported on your browser

Displayed in Chrome-based Opera that sends Chrome's User-Agent string and deliberately doesn't even mention "Opera" in the header.

It's so annoying that Google keeps discriminating against other browsers even when there can't even be a vaguest technical reason to do so.

Why would even simple Q&A site need to require only handful of latest browsers? Why is Google still using User-Agent sniffing? (they have top-notch web developers who all know how stupid that is...)

gcb1• 13 years ago

lol. first one on the question lost when i clicked

http://www.google.com/baraza/en/thread?tid=76951fbe3c65173e

goombastic• 13 years ago

Whenever I hear of a product from Google, the first thing I wonder about is when they plan to retire it. I'd rather patronize alternatives.

oddshocks• 13 years ago

I like the one that asks "Why Google collaborate with the NSA?"

The one response is "you crazy".

pax2• 13 years ago

also → http://otvety.google.ru

pax2• 13 years ago

I wonder why they chose not to allow commenting on questions (possible on Quora or Stack Exchange). Allowing comments could help improve existing answers, but I guess it would add more noise.

nkg• 13 years ago

Oh, Oh... time-consuming website!

stefan_kendall• 13 years ago

They shutter google reader, and this is what we get.

Fuck.

Google Baraza

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