Google Answers' predecessor was Google Questions and Answers, which was launched in August 2001. This service involved Google staffers answering questions by e-mail for a flat fee (US$3.00). It was fully functional for about 24 hours, after which it was shut down, possibly due to excessive demand and the tough competition that Yahoo set in place. and Amazon Mechanical Turk. Google Answers was launched in April 2002 and came out of beta in May 2003. It received more than 100 question postings per day when the service ended in December 2006.