

Ask.com to refocus away from search, towards Q&A - Stevenup7002
http://thenextweb.com/us/2010/11/09/ask-jeeves-no-more-iac-shuttering-ask-com-search/

======
msbmsb
Ask.com is not shutting down. They are ending their in-house _general_
crawling & search system to focus on the Q&A aspect. These articles[1],[2]
have better details. They will be continuing to offer general search results
on ask.com, but outsourced through an unknown provider.

 _"Ask will continue to use its web crawling technology, but far more
selectively. Rather than trying to find everything from across the web, the
crawling will be much more focused around sites that provide answers to
questions people search for at the service. Ask will also continue to maintain
its own news search service, both through crawling and pulling in news feeds.

Of course, Ask doesn’t want to be in a position where if someone does a
search, they come up empty if Ask’s own database of answers has nothing. So
the company will outsource for the comprehensive web search matches that it
used to gather itself.

Which company will provide those results? Leeds said he’s not allowed to say.
Almost certainly, it’s Google."_

[1]: [http://searchengineland.com/ask-com-to-focus-on-qa-search-
en...](http://searchengineland.com/ask-com-to-focus-on-qa-search-end-web-
crawling-55209) [2]: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-09/iac-s-diller-
surren...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-09/iac-s-diller-surrenders-
to-google-juggernaut-ends-ask-com-search-effort.html)

~~~
reinhardt
Ex Ask.com engineer here, left around a year ago. The big focus on Q&A and the
(partial) outsourcing of general web search had been going on since early
2009, if not even earlier. And yes, it's Google.

Oh well, it's been a good run, I've been expecting something like this to go
down for quite some time now. I'm actually surprised Diller hasn't pulled the
plug yet for good.

------
randfish
If any engineers from Ask.com are seeking employment, please drop us a line -
<http://is.gd/gSyDd>

I'm sad to see them go - they actually innovated a lot of the things Google
ended up using (topic-specific link popularity as a concept, the preview pane,
the 3 column layout for search, etc.). It sucks to be the first to do
something right, then see the market leader simply take your ideas and run
with it.

~~~
kiba
It simply means that Google is an agile giant. If they were not so agile, they
could have been crushed by ask.com and bing.com.

In other words, the free market system is working.

~~~
tjarratt
It may be an unpopular opinion, but sometimes it's nice to have multiple
companies competing in the longterm, and for the market leader to struggle to
keep their lead.

If ask.com and bing.com move out of the search space or turn off the lights
(hypothetically), then those are two fewer companies competing with Google and
driving their innovation. If you have many companies in the field, this isn't
a huge deal, but search has (as far as I can remember) been dominated by a few
giants, had a high barrier to entry, and seems to be shrinking every year. In
this case, the market has done some good, but Google could always create a
better search product - and if they didn't, then we would need competitors to
do it.

"The free market system is working" really isn't a very nice response to "our
company is desperately trying to maintain a revenue stream" (which is probably
an exaggeration of ask.com's current financial situation).

~~~
kiba
If Google becomes so good at the search game, thus end up with a monopoly, why
should we care at all?

Would you complain if oils are cheap as a result of an oil monopoly?

In any case, google have thousand of engineers working on search results,
trying out day in and day out outcompete bing.com and other search engine
competitors.

That's a sign that merit decides the fate of corporations.

~~~
meric
Google isn't a monopoly yet, so they still remain innovative; Just like
Internet Explorer 6 was, until it wiped out remaining competitors and
established a monopoly.

------
leftnode
That Ask.com still has 1%-2% of US search traffic is astounding. It must be
people using browsers with the default search engine set as Ask and not
knowing any better.

~~~
flatline
I had my dad start using Ask Jeeves some time back in the 90's. Altavista had
gone south and the online search space was very fluid, I thought that Ask was
pretty decent, and Jeeves was kind of cool back then. I was surprised when
visiting him a few months back to see the site come up as his home page, he
said it always did what he wanted so he never changed.

~~~
percept
They say Google isn't "sticky" but that's a good counter-example (albeit a
small sample size).

~~~
brk
How is that a counter-example?

It sounds like his dad never tried Google, thus there was nothing to "stick".

I think the lesson here is that while the search engine switching cost is $0,
people are creatures of habit and may continue using something long past its
expiration date if it is returning expected results.

What we see from this case is also why IE has such a huge market share. Less
computer literate people will start using whatever some more experienced
entity tells them to, and will keep using it until/unless they are forcibly
switched to a new platform.

~~~
derefr
They say "Google isn't sticky" because they think that _search engines_ aren't
sticky (they just happen to be doing the analysis relative to Google);
flatline's father "sticking" with Ask is a counterexample of a search engine
being sticky.

------
egonschiele
"Though its traditional search business hasn’t grown, IAC is increasing its
“toolbar” business, which places various clickable tools on the browsers of
Internet users, and enables IAC to collect a fee each time the toolbar is
used."

It's sick how much money IAC is making from this crap.

~~~
yesimahuman
Don't support foxit reader if you also despise this "business" as they notably
include it in their installer.

~~~
mkr-hn
I use evince on Windows and Linux.

------
ax0n
The second startup I worked for ended up folding and selling the smoldering
remnants of any intellectual property worth having to David Warthen. It was
also a solution for a problem no one had, but with a similar slant to the
product Ask was offering.

------
Jabbles
I suppose it's unfortunate in that a lack of competition won't push companies
to develop exciting new search technology.

On the other hand, I haven't used it for many years and haven't heard anything
good about it either.

~~~
jasonlotito
I think Bing is doing well enough that Google is having to keep pushing. It
has less a share than IE had at the start of the second browser war, so it's
not like it can't be overcome. Then you look at smaller engines like DDG and
while I'm sure they aren't big enough to be tracked at the moment, I'm also
positive Google has them on their radar.

------
moultano
That's a shame. I found them better/more-interesting than Google for a number
of queries. Not on average certainly, but on enough queries that I was pretty
interested in their technology.

------
golgo13
I remember them trying a lot of things, such as the Peek feature that Google
is now using. Sad to see them go. But, like everyone else, I never used them.

------
rhizome
Probably the highest-profile dotcom providing a solution in search of a
problem, I don't think they ever really settled into place.

