ReadWriteWeb

Ask.com, a well-known innovator but distant runner in the search race, has decided to give up algorithmic web search, according to a report today from Brad Stone and Brett Pulley in Bloomberg.

The news marks the end of an era. IAC's Barry Diller told Bloomberg that it was a concession to the incredible search power of Google and company execs say they intend on shifting the product to the social Q&A it unveiled this Summer. That's another field that's already crowded with competitors. The passage of Ask as search marks the end of a number of interesting experiments.

Ask.com launched in 1996 and even though the site went through a number of changes through the years (remember Jeeves?), it is still one of the first services many Internet users think of when looking for a site where they can get their questions answered. Today, after trying to compete with Google as a general search engine for a while, Ask.com is getting back to its heritage by launching a new question and answer service that mixes results from Ask.com's search engine with answers the company found on other Q&A sites and the ability to address questions to the Ask community directly. The end result feels a bit like a mix between Bing, Yahoo Answers, Quora and Aardvark.

According to the latest data from analytics firm Hitwise, Ask managed to grow an astonishing 21% last month (from 2.84% to 3.44%), while Microsoft's Bing actually lost 1%. After a long period of slow but steady decline, the total number of U.S. searches on Yahoo grew about 3% last month, while Google lost about 1% and fell under 70%. Alternative search engines only accounted for 1.93% of all U.S. searches.

According to Ask.com spokesperson Nicholas Graham, while companies are expected to help community organizations, it's not unheard of for these cause-related partnerships to also benefit the companies. After donating $25,000 to Autism Speaks through a targeted awareness campaign, 80,000 visitors changed their Ask home pages to Autism Speaks-related skins and 63% of campaign visitors became permanent users. Despite the fact that the promotion lasted only a few days, Ask saw a 10% increase over other holiday and non-cause related skinning promotions. In anticipation of October and Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Ask is building upon its community successes and teaming up with Susan G. Komen for the Cure in "Search for the Cure".

Ask.com isn't a bad search engine. In fact, the company has launched some innovative features over the years that have demonstrated their ambition and drive compete with search giant, Google. From walking directions in Ask Maps to voice-activated ones for when you're mobile and from 3D interfaces to smart answers to the privacy tool AskEraser, Ask.com tried to stand out from the other search sites by offering a useful and unique set of features.