For Ask.com, Becoming #3 In Search Must Be Bittersweet
When the Microsoft/Yahoo search deal goes through, if Microsoft's Bing takes all of Yahoo's US search engine market share then it will be at 26% to Google's 70%, according to traffic analysts Hitwise. Such consolidation would put the venerable Ask.com in third place, with a mere 2.46%. That would mean that the next spot on the ladder will have 10X as much market share as Ask. That can't make the company happy.
Despite years of innovation, millions spent on marketing, a very logical domain name for search and relatively good brand recognition - Ask is still hurting.
A number of the search engine's features are among the best you'll find anywhere. It was integrating multimedia and succinct answers to question queries years before Yahoo and Google started dabbling in that kind of search response. Ask's Maps search has a great UI, its search privacy policies answered everyones' fears about their data in the hands of Google or AOL. Ask's blog search is nearly spam free and more sophisticated than almost any other blog search on the web.
And yet relatively few people care. It's hard to know why.
Another search engine company, real-time focused OneRiot, made a blog post this morning celebrating the Microsoft/Yahoo! deal as likely to dislodge the mental block most people have regarding Google as the only search engine option. They said the deal is going to lead to a better world for all of us, including for startup search engines. It's an interesting argument, but the enthusiasm seems a touch feigned and the conclusion hard to swallow.
At least OneRiot had something to say. Ask.com hasn't posted anything on its company blog in two weeks. It's been three months since the company said anything on its Twitter account. It's got to be hard being #3 right now.
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imo Bing has something going for it. Strangely enough, I find myself using it when I get weary of wading through the Google spam.
Ask just never really hit a nerve - it feels like they outsourced their tech, and you kind of get that "plain vanilla" feeling.
Hmm...Jason Calacanis said in this post http://calacanis.com/2009/07/29/yahoo-committed-seppuku-today that innovation is what it needed for Yahoo to stay in the game.
If Ask.com innovated that much (before Yahoo and Google) then how come they are not in a top spot (and I am not referring to that 3rd place)?
Wow! Finally Microsoft has reached a deal Yahoo for an internet search partnership. Will the newly announced deal between giants Microsoft and Yahoo be a good thing? Got to wait and see. But atleast Microsoft and Yahoo deal is straightforward and not complex at all and ofcourse, the negotiation talks have been going for long. I was just curious to know all the past negotiations between Microsoft and Yahoo so collected all the articles and links (more than 200) related to the current merger and the previous events or negotiations between Microsoft and Yahoo. If you are interested check the link below.
http://markthispage.blogspot.com/2009/07/saga-of-microsoft-and-yahoo-from-2007.html
Marshall-
Maybe it's the time of night, but this post just hit me in a really humorous way. A friend of mine is in a pretty integral role over at Bing and he told me that things are pretty much "business as usual" in the Microsoft camp today. That cracks me up. When #2 and #3 merge and day-to-day life isn't impacted too heavily, what does that tell you? At least Ask.com can poke fun at their situation and celebrate a small victory. Great post, sir. Thanks for making me smile tonight.
Once a Jeeviant, always a Jeeviant. When Ask Jeeves abandoned natural language search it became just another search engine, ask.com. I'd click to it and experience violent narcolepsy. It was hard to do, easy to make fun of, but freaking sweet when it worked. But they expanded in a popper-fueled hysteria of the late 90s and then had to bring in The CEO 5000 businessification engine and out when the feebs, weirdies and horrifying geek sexpots. A fucking snooze.
(By the way, turns out my FriendFeed key was "raped616.." something. Does FriendFeed find rape ironically hilarious? Or was it just a randomly-generated episode of lady hate? Either way, I think I'll pass.)
poor market share...
indeed
Good ol' Ask Jeeves gets to be in the third place. It will remind them of the late nineties when they used to be popular.
"And yet relatively few people care. It's hard to know why."
It's not THAT hard.
They are clumsy and unclear about both their brand and services. People who want a search engine still associate Ask with Jeeves, and people who loved Jeeves are disappointed that its just another search engine. They changed their approach and didn't clarify it to consumers. And, as their split UK/USA personality shows, they still aren't even quite sure internally whether they want to be a search engine or an answer service.
They also put WAY too many sponsored links on some search pages, and don't clearly distinguish them from search results, which leads folks to not trust their search results.
Ask.com was awful, is awful, and will always be awful. There's just no getting away from it. They should be happy they have even a 2% share. It's hard to imagine why anyone would ever use them at all.
This seems to be a major step in internet domination....
For Ask.com, Becoming #3 In Search Must Be Bitersweet http://bit.ly/eGHd2 don't forget about Ask!! [from http://twitter.com/marshallk/statuses/2919883966]
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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August 11, 2009 10:28 AM