Google Launches GChat "Talk Guru," an Automated Q&A Service

In the midst of all the Q&A fervor around Quora to Aardvark to Facebook Questions, Google has decided to get in on the act using Gchat.  The striking difference is that Google has completely automated the answers, instead of using a user-wiki system, i.e. waiting until your peers choose to respond with a particular gem of knowledge to a question.   At first glance, it looks like Google has integrated many of their various services, from translation and calculations to definitions to immediate web results, all within the confines of your instant messaging service.  

Now Gchat is my personal favorite IM platform for business or pleasure, and I am much less likely to go to a third-party site if I can get answers quickly on my phone or while in gmail.    Quora and Aardvark will remain useful for abstract or technical questions, and Facebook Questions seems like it will benefit queries of a personal nature, but Google Talk Guru could easily be the fastest and best alternative to questions about everything else!

This is how you get started:

Welcome to Google Talk Guru!

Get started! Send a chat invitation to guru@googlelabs.com.

Google Talk Guru is an experimental service that allows people to get information like sports results, weather forecasts, definitions etc via chat. It works on many popular chat applications that support Google Talk.

To start using Google Talk Guru:

1. Sign into a chat client that supports Google Talk
2. Send a chat invitation to guru@googlelabs.com or click the "Invite myself to chat with Guru" link below.
3. Find guru in your contact list and send chat queries to guru using the examples below:

Sport scores: score arsenal
Weather: weather Nairobi
Calculate: 123 * 45
Currency: 120 KES to USD
Definition: define laptop
Translation: translate earth to French
Web result: web Mount Kenya
Help: help translate

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via guru.googlelabs.com