Google Acquires Aardvark: Google Answers 2.0?

Google has acquired San Francisco based Mechanical Zoo Inc., the company behind social answers site Aardvark.

The deal, believed to be for $50 million, was confirmed by Mashable, who quoted an unnamed Google spokesman stating that Google had “signed an agreement to acquire Aardvark but don’t have any additional details to report at this time.”

Aardvark is a 2.0 take on traditional questions and answers sites such as Yahoo Answers or the similar (but now defunct) Google Answers service. Instead of simply putting questions onto a website, Aardvark takes a user’s social connections and attempts to identify the best person within that network, or extended network (friends of friends) who might be able to assist in giving the answer.

It’s an odd buy for Google, although at $50 million it’s mere pocket change for the search giant. Google already covers some aspects of what Aardvark does, and although a concept it may be modern, it wouldn’t seem terribly hard to replicate either (well, if you knew what you were doing.) Perhaps there’s something exceptionally special in the algorithms that run Aardvark that Google wanted?

One thing is sure though: Aardvark’s days as a standalone service are numbered, and in some shape or form the engine driving the site will appear as either a new Google product (Google Answers 2.0?) or added to an existing product.