Google is officially announcing the launch of a new service for the Arab world, under the name Google Egabat (meaning Google Answers in Arabic), in an event now taking place in Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), Dubai, UAE.
As the name suggests the product is a questions and answers service, a community-driven knowledge market site that allows users to both submit questions to be answered and answer questions asked by other users.
But unlike the now defunct Google Answers, which shut down in December 2006, where asker-accepted answers used to cost $2 to $200, Google Egabat deploys a reputation and incentive system, giving members the chance to earn points along the way, as a means to encourage participation.
While using the service, rating answers, and other tasks on the service users get to accumulate points in their account that they can use to ask questions of their own, assigning a number of those points to be transferred to the person who gives the best answer.
In parallel users also accumulate reputation points that are assigned to them depending on the good questions or answers they post on the service, according to the votes by the other users. Each user’s expertise level is based on the number of reputation points they were able to accumulate, going through nine different levels, ranging from newbie to scientist.
Upon signing up to the service users get 20 free points in their account that they can spend on asking questions and 10 points in reputation points. Each action from just visiting the site to answering to rating brings its own rewards in terms of points. The details for the points system can be found here (in Arabic).
Questions are broken down and organized by categories, sub-categories, and tags, to make them easier for people to find and access answers to.
Similar services by Google are also currently available in two other markets: Russia (since June 2007) and China (with Tianya, a Chinese community website, as Tianya Answers).
The service can be accessed through http://egabat.google.com or http://ejabat.google.com; covering both possible ways to write the word.
The Question Company is a UAE based company that provides a question and answer sms-based service, that enables users in the UAE to sms any question to them and get an answer back in a few minutes time.