Google silently acquired Superpod, a startup founded by ex-Googlers William Li and Sophia Yang in 2016, and focused on providing its users with a platform to obtain answers from experts to questions from a wide variety of fields. The search giant acquired the startup for approximately $60 million according to Fortune. Superpod’s founders shutdown the project and the superpod.io website during September 2018, leaving behind a notice thanking the community. The move could be a direct response to Amazon’s Alexa Answers knowledge crowdsourcing program.
Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-acquires-qanda-startup-superpod-to-boost-assistant-iq/