Is Ask Giving Up Battle for Search or Staying the Course? Which is True?
Lot's of talk related to search engine Ask lately. First there were rumors that Ask would be laying off some of its workforce and abandoning the Teoma technology they had worked so hard on the last few years. Then Ask responds and calls the rumors false. Those of us who are cheering Ask on in the battle for search market share breathed a sign of relief... but not for long. The next day a story breaks reporting that Ask has laid off 8% of their workforce (40 jobs) and that they were changing the strategy of the search engine to "focus to better answering search queries posed as questions." This was followed by a report that Ask would become a search engine geared towards married women. If that wasn't enough drama, today we hear from Ask once again claiming that despite all the rumors and speculation, they remain committed to search. Are you confused? I know I am.
Ask has made some pretty significant changes over the last year and a half. First they got rid of the butler and now they have gone 3D. This new three dimensional version not only includes a major overhaul of the home page as well as the way search results appear,
they have also added a laundry list of new features and resources. The company is calling this release as a "major leap forward" for search which includes a bold three-panel interface (taken from the
experimental Ask X) that integrates more multimedia content, including images, videos, music files, as well as more structured text-based content.
