14 DAY TRIAL // The unsettling winds of change are being felt by Ask.com staff, as parent company IAC has announced some serious changes coming up. Among the options talked about in higher circles are completely selling off or abandoning the current search technology and outsourcing it to Google.
Were Ask.com a bit bigger in the search market, Microsoft would have been mighty interested in it, but the few percentages it would add by taking it over would not give the Redmond-based giant nearly the boost needed to jumpstart the new Engagement Mapping they have rolled out early last week.
Signs and signals of the coming change have already begun showing, at the moment there are more ads on top of the organic spot, mostly powered by Google. Hence the question in the title. The only downside to this modification is the feeling users are being left with, that their search results are less important than the advertisements.
Silicon Valley quotes an inside tipster writing that: "There is indeed a big shakeup coming. A new Ask. Some think a reduction in workforce is likely. There are no sacred cows, Teoma may be sold or simply abandoned which is hundreds of engineers who work on the core search engine, in place of just using Google's search with our special brand of user interface."
IAC's CEO Barry Diller has repeatedly announced that he supports and loves the technology developed by his engineers, but sadly for them the numbers are not looking very bright. And after all, Diller is a numbers guy, famous for the schemes he uses when profit is to be made.
The combining of Google search with the Ask.com interface would be one of the most interesting and eye-pleasing experiences available on the web, but there are still a few steps until that is final.