It must be good for Yahoo! morale to be able to defeat Google for once. Not that Yahoo! is doing too bad. They still have the largest and hottest web property on the web. Still, the entrepreneurs over at Google seem to get all the glory.

Not any more. As we reported earlier this week, Google has admitted defeat in the Q&A arena, the main reason probably being that Google Answers was falling far, far behind Yahoo! Answers. The Google pay-per-answer formula has been a failure.

The Yahoo! staff is doing their best not to gloat, arguing that “some great knowledge was created on that service by the Google Answers Researchers.”

The Yahoo! Search Blog soon gets to the point, however, revealing the company’s true motives: it wants the Google researchers for themselves:

“So, this is an open invitation for those researchers to join us. Please consider sharing your knowledge with millions of people on Yahoo! Answers; connect with users with shared interests; get answers to all your questions; and help build the world’s most vibrant and trusted community.”

They have even set up a new Yahoo! Tech Group for ex Google researchers called exGAR. It has already some 50 members, as far as we can see.

Aaah, this is just soooo elegantly done! And Yahoo! has reason be proud. Google may be best at search, but Yahoo! is better at community building.

So, Googleplexers, what are going to do now to get even? This can get ugly