Heads up, all you freelance knowledge workers: Google has a new place to sell your skills, but don't expect to get rich. The beta site Google Answers lets the public post questions and the price they'd pay for an answer, and registered researchers get to answer them in return for the fee (minus Google's 25%, of course).
A couple of things make me wonder whether this is a viable service. One is the pricing, which seems quite low (mostly in the $4-$10 range). I can see why the clients might not want to spend more without knowing anything about the credibility of the researchers, but at that price I think the researchers would have to work very fast and sloppily to make any significant money.
The other problem is that Google Answers doesn't provide an easy way to search or browse the questions by area of expertise. If as in the current setup a researcher has to waste a lot of time sifting through an unsorted pile of questions before even beginning to earn his or her $4, then the payoff is diminished even further.
Of course, the state of the local economy makes a big difference: $4-$10 U.S. would go a lot farther in India or Argentina than in the U.S. I could see Enig in Brazil being more interested in this than Colin in Brooklyn.