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Ask and Ye Shall Receive: Goal of UCSB's Tao Yang As an Ask.Com VP

Posted on: Tuesday, 4 April 2006, 12:00 CDT

By Michael Todd, Santa Barbara News-Press, Calif.

Apr. 3--UCSB computer science professor Tao Yang has been named senior vice president and chief scientist for Ask.com, as the former Ask Jeeves Web site has been dubbed.

Mr. Yang is perhaps best known in the industry for being co-inventor of the search algorithm for the Teoma, or ExpertRank, search engine, an innovative approach somewhat overshadowed in a world dominated by Google.

Ask.com itself has some heavyweight backing -- it's an arm of Barry Diller's InterActive Corp., or IAC, which includes such businesses as Home Shopping Network, Lending Tree, Match.com and Ticketmaster.

Ask.com has used Mr. Yang's Teoma as the algorithmic backbone of Ask Jeeves since Teoma was purchased by then-Ask Jeeves in September 2001. Last July, Ask.com itself was acquired by IAC; Mr. Yang's new role became official March 16.

While Google essentially delivers search results based on how often other sites link to the one containing the keywords, a measure of its "popularity," Mr. Yang's work attempts to evaluate a site's "authority" to answer the query.

To do so, the site focuses much of its energy on "data mining," tapping databases and other non-Web page-based sources that are available on the Internet.

Factors such as relevance, content freshness, quality and promptness pepper Mr. Yang's description of what makes his company's search engine both different and important.

He was happy to execute some sample queries, such as "Where is UCSB?" on both his engine and Google to show how Ask's product delivers the right answer at the top of the replies, and not just inside one of the top choices.

His goal is to speed up the user's search by getting to the point faster.

"Our focus is how we can make the user happiest," said Mr. Yang.

But he's not dismissive of Google, which unsurprisingly is the most popular search engine, according to February data from comScore Media Metrix.

Ask.com comes in fifth, behind Yahoo!, MSN and AOL (which essentially uses Google), although Ask notes that it's the second largest "pure" search engine on the Web. (In total Web traffic, Ask comes in seventh.) "We respect what Google does," said Mr. Yang, noting both that two UCSB professors have gone to work with Google and some of his own students have done the same. "Google also brings good things to us -- people realize that search is really important." Ask has been increasing its market share over the last year, according to comScore, rising from 5.3 percent of the market in February 2005 to 6 percent last February.

While that might seem modest, it's the only major search engine other than Google to grow its share, and that growth represents a healthy 13 percent gain year to year.

In addition to Ask.com in the United States, there are sites serving Germany, Spain, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and Mr. Yang says the company is building a presence in his native country of China.

Under its banner, Ask also includes other mass market sites such as Evite, the portal Excite, iWon and My Way.

Mr. Yang has been working on the Teoma engine -- the Gaelic word for "expert" -- since his former mentor at Rutgers University, Apostolos Gerasoulis, brought him on board in 2000 as chief scientist.

When Teoma was acquired by Ask Jeeves, Mr. Yang kept his position as chief scientist, and with Ask.com joining the IAC stable, he's been chief scientist and vice president of search development.

"Tao's impact at Ask has been immeasurable, due in large part to his role in transforming Ask.com search into one of only four technologies operating at a world-class level today," said Steve Berkowitz, Ask.com chief executive officer.

"Tao has been instrumental in pioneering some of the most important developments in the history of search, particularly in the area of large-scale distributed architectures and algorithms, and we look forward to his continued contributions." According to IAC, in his new role Mr. Yang will drive the development and growth of search technology on a global scale, continuing work he's already done on scalability.

Meanwhile, Mr. Yang is working part-time at UCSB -- where he's been a professor of computer science since 1993 -- as his duties at Ask have grown.

"As an academic, it's really a different style of working," Mr. Yang said.

"Now I feel like I'm really developing something for the real world, getting my hands dirty."

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Copyright (c) 2006, Santa Barbara News-Press, Calif.

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ASKJ, GOOG, IDC,

Source: Santa Barbara News-Press

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