I was reading an article on TechCrunch yesterday about Ask.com “experimental” search feature that is really nothing more than a giant ad engine. Take a look at what they mean.
Search for… Stocks or Mortgages or Cars or Music…
And where is the content? Maybe this is a bad design flaw, but it just makes the search engine look bad.
This got me asking, however, why is Ask.com still around? While I understand a company attempting to fill a niche market I cannot see how they are filling this goal.
Ask.com was purchased by IAC for 1.85Billion in cash, and is still ranked as the #5 search engine out there, but is there a purpose they serve? Their market share has been consistently trending downward since 2006, no consistent business plan seems to be in place, and for the life of me I cannot figure out who their target users are.
I’m guessing IAC hasn’t sold off the ask.com technology and web properties to competitors simply due to the fact they have no ability to recoup the $1.85B spent at this point – plus a huge write-off wouldn’t look good at this point either.
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