> That was the reaction in 2003 when Denise Griffin, the person in charge of Google’s small customer-support team, asked Page for a larger staff. Instead, he told her that the whole idea of customer support was ridiculous. Rather than assuming the unscalable task of answering users one by one, Page said, Google should enable users to answer one another’s questions.

That explains a few things... I wonder why they they even bothered writing Google Forums, they could have just thrown phpBB at it and call it a day.