Google Helpouts Joins Google Answers

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Edwin Jonk: As expected:
  " Sadly, we’ve made the tough decision to shut down the product. " ;
• 
  Rotimi Orimoloye: Was it poor marketing/promotion?
  Or is it that people just don't need help these days?
• 
  Edwin Jonk: Dunno. The last time I checked the helpouts, the pricing looked like a race to the bottom. That is, for me the prices went down so much that I personally wouldn't engage on that platform because I cannot make a "real" revenue.... ;
• 
  Rotimi Orimoloye: ah! I see
• 
  Masatake Wasa: I'm not surprised at all. +Edwin Jonk ;makes a great point, and there certainly was a race to the bottom. The pricing arrangement was odd: allowing free Helpouts sort of defeated the purpose in my view.
  
  There was insufficient distinction between Helpouts and Hangouts in terms of functionality. Helpouts was restricted: many people couldn't get onto Helpouts because certain kinds of services were not accepted. But the very same people could set up a paid service with access to private Hangouts, without giving a cut of the profit to Google.
  
  For Google it represented a pretty high risk with regard to reputation: because Google takes a cut of the revenue, and there was some vetting on the part of Google, to many people, it would have seemed that Google endorsed the providers in Helpouts.
• 
  Edwin Jonk: Imo if they would have branded with the YouTube, things might had turned out differently. That is, there are some great stylised (fashion people for lack of words :D) on YT...
• 
  Rotimi Orimoloye: +Edwin Jonk
  I think so too.
  Just like I think they should have called it "Youtube Hangouts" instead of "Google+ Hangouts". lol
  Most people i know seem to be much more into YT than Google.
• 
  Edwin Jonk: G should hire us ;-)
• 
  Rotimi Orimoloye: lol
  I wish