Ask.com Announces Major Makeover
Ask.com has announced that it plans to lay off about 40 employees, accounting to 8 percent of its work force in an effort to focus on the married women market.
The Oakland-based company made the decision to stick to the basics of providing general tips and answers to various questions to its users.
In 2005, InterActiveCorp bought Ask for a reported $2.3 billion with hopes of providing a more comprehensive source of information than Google.
The sudden decision to focus on married women primarily living in the southern and midwestern United States represents a break from Ask’s former mission to outperform rival search engine Google, who dominates the industry with a huge 58.5 percent share.
Through January, Ask’s search engine was the fifth largest search engine on the Web United States with a 4.5 percent market share, according to comScore Media Metrix.
"No matter what (Ask) did, it just wasn’t enough to get people to leave Google," Chris Winfield, who runs a search engine consulting firm, 10e20, told Associated Press. "This looks they are raising the white flag."
Jim Safka became Ask’s chief executive two months ago. He said that the firm is optimistic about the clarity of the new approach.
"Everyone at Ask is excited about our clear focus and the trajectory-changing results it will deliver," he said.
InterActiveCorp intends to split into five separate companies later this year. The company already appealed to women through their online dating site, Match.com.
Google already posts text-based ads on Ask and InterActiveCorp’s other Web sites in a five-year deal that chief executive Barry Diller expects to generate about $3.5 billion.
Earlier this year, Microsoft, who is currently third in the Internet market, announced plans to purchase Yahoo Inc for nearly $40 billion. Yahoo currently holds the second rank on the Web.
Ask began in 1996 under the name AskJeeves. The site promised to give answers to many common questions, but it received skepticism for often returning non-related results.
Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said that Ask’s move to focus on female demographics could prove to be a beneficial decision rather than surrendering to Google.
"It’s a smart move," she said. "I still think Ask has great technology, but it’s just really hard to fight against Google."
"It’s not so much that these women have simple questions. It’s just that they are so busy that they need fast answers."
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