Ask.com, known as Ask Jeeves until 2006, has been in a state of decline for some time now. Google has really stomped over all the competition, and the like of Ask, MSN, Yahoo and Altavista, not to mention newbies like Cuil, are all now the minority in search. But Ask.com is planning a come back. And what are they planning? Going back to their roots. Ask.com are planning to become the search engine to ask questions in.
Even though Ask has been in decline for about five years, most users do still use it to help answer questions. So it is not really clear how Ask plan to win over new users, or win back some old users.
Ask have stated that they have streamlined their search engine, and that the new site is both more accessible, and more user friendly, as well as much faster.
Cesar Mascaraque, European managing director of Ask, admits that it has many similarities with Google. There are only so many ways to list the top quality websites and filter out all the spam. he also has said that Ask is targeting a relatively narrow age group – 35 to 55-year-olds. This cuts out all teens, and all older and retired users, which are the growing demographic.
Ask may be able to gain ground in some countries, such as Australia and South Africa, but in the UK Google dominates with an 80% market share in search, compared to 2% for Ask.
Is Ask’s approach ultimately now too outdated? Take a look a Yahoo Answers, where you can ask a question and have individuals respond, usually within minutes. How is it different from Google? It is still a but hit and miss whether the search result actually answers your question at all. The internet has always been about moving forward, creating new ideas. Going back to the original plans seems likely to fail. Google’s dominance is not just due to a successful search engine, it is due to all the spin offs that it has developed. Google desktop, Blogger, Calendar, Gmail, Documents – to name but a few. What else has Ask created? What else is Ask developing? Businesses need to diversify in a competitive market, to find those new niches. Rarely can success be found by taking a step backwards.
