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February 29, 2008

Ask May Dump Teoma For Google, Layoff 100 People

Duncan Riley

21 comments »

asklogo.jpgAsk is rumored to be considering switching to Google for search and subsequently downsizing its engineering team.

According to Silicon Alley Insider, Ask may abandon or selling its Teoma search engine in favor of using Google for its search results. Teoma has powered Ask since it was acquired in September 2001. The decision will result in “bad news for Ask Engineers.”

Paid Content puts the downsizing figure at 100 in April, although they note that the final decision on the switch to Google hasn’t been signed off on yet.

The decision to abandon Ask’s in-house search engine comes following a $100 million advertising campaign in 2007 that succeeded in growing Ask’s market share, but not to a significant level in the overall market. Google already provides Ask with its search ads through a recently renegotiated, five-year, $3.5 billion deal.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Andrew

    February 29th, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    Call me stupid…but isn’t ask a search engine? Or do they call themselves an advertising business?

  2. jenkins

    February 29th, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    They’re a total BS search engine. All they really care about are those Google links on top of their pages. Everything else is window dressing.

  3. Yakov

    February 29th, 2008 at 2:34 pm

    The question Aske never answered is how its search is different from Google. No wonder, they are heading to deadpool with their search engine..

  4. SearcH◆ EngineS WEB

    February 29th, 2008 at 2:48 pm

    Microsoft may act on this rumor and attempt to acquire them.

    Also dont count Yahoo out - Ask is valuable property - and Yahoo did acquire Altavista and AllTheWeb when they could no longer sustain themselves

  5. Andy Gongea

    February 29th, 2008 at 2:48 pm

    This is bad bad news. Google is heading into the search engine battle almost alone. Too bad, I was hoping that Ask would gain some market share but it looks like the pretty user interface is not gonna help them.

    Kudos for their efforts.

  6. Jon A.

    February 29th, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    I don’t understand this move. It devalues Ask.com as an independent search engine and options to get acquired down the road…

  7. jenkins

    February 29th, 2008 at 2:56 pm

    Yahoo is NOT going to buy Ask.com. Why? They suffer from declining usage and get 70% of their revenue from Google.

  8. Damien

    February 29th, 2008 at 4:04 pm

    why not just point their domain hosting to google.com and be done with it.

  9. setbrand

    February 29th, 2008 at 7:14 pm

    Ask is doing well to its sphere, it take some share away from MSN, the traffic to Ask.com significantly grown up, I don’t think it will be acquired by someone in near future.

  10. Samson

    February 29th, 2008 at 7:30 pm

    It would seem like the decision to approach Google as their complete search provider is more of an executive decision with the end goal towards maximizing their ROI, rather than to advance the ASK brand or technology.

    Perhaps for ASK the best bet is to restructure the site as a portal that more finely integrates IAC numerous other assets to provide value to users. Search to me seems like a losing game for them. Googles technology is only going to get better (google will keep pouring more $$$ and more engineers), and its not likely that the ASK team working on search will be able to keep pace.

    ASK still has a known brand on the web that can be leveraged in other category’s then to assume the ASK brand can only live by SEARCH.

  11. Marcus Ruark

    February 29th, 2008 at 7:36 pm

    When we announced earlier this week that surveyed users preferred Gigablast’s (http://www.gigablast.com/) search results to Ask.com’s results by a 30% margin in a blind “taste test,” I thought Gigablast might have more time to enjoy the moment. Who knew Ask might raise the white flag so soon…

    Admittedly, Gigablast has a long way to go in terms of market share, and a tough road ahead, but our quality search results certainly make us a real alternative to the dwindling group of current search leaders.

    Others have said it, but I’ll repeat it: this is certainly going to be an exciting year in search.

    Marcus Ruark
    Gigablast, Inc.

    http://www.gigablast.com

  12. NotABug

    February 29th, 2008 at 8:10 pm

    To #6, not sure if they’re interested in getting acquired, IAC is hughe, but you never know, if Yahoo! got such an offer from the vole, anything is possible.

    Let’s see how this works out for all the people that had deals with ask.com, wonder how a search engine change will affect all the existing partner contracts.

  13. dale

    February 29th, 2008 at 8:23 pm

    going to ASk is like a waste of time. You can never find anything.

  14. whoopie

    February 29th, 2008 at 9:30 pm

    #4 in a two horse race. turning this thing into a rebranding effort is a no-brainer. the engineering staff is wasting their time, ask.com is a footnote in the market

    soon only G and yahoosoft will be left

    everyone else is on borrowed time

  15. JimOnline

    March 1st, 2008 at 3:27 am

    After all the whoopla that Ask made (and money spent) to show themselves different from everyone else, it seems they’re throwing in the towel if they go with Google search. What’s the point in typing in Ask.com, when Google.com is the end result?

    The fix resulting from downsizing will only be temporary. As “whoopie” wrote, soon all that will be left is Google and Yahoo … and I’m not so sure about Yahoo.

  16. Julian Kussman

    March 1st, 2008 at 6:57 pm

    Dear Editors of Techcrunch,
    Can someone please run all of Duncan Riley’s stories through MS Word’s grammar and spelling checker? I have yet to see one article he’s written that was free of errors. It really detracts from your professional image.

    E.g.: “…Ask may abandon or selling its Teoma search engine…”

  17. ask user

    March 1st, 2008 at 7:10 pm

    i love ask for its interface and its results are pretty good and sometimes better than google. sad if this happens. so much for google’s monopoly.

  18. ask user

    March 1st, 2008 at 7:12 pm

    @16, nobody notices grammatical errors and dont feed the bullyman(MS Word) :)

  19. hmm

    March 1st, 2008 at 7:14 pm

    not to mention ask has some of the brightest engineers. they deserve to be elsewhere

  20. ask lover

    March 2nd, 2008 at 5:24 am

    bye bye teoma.. but what will happen with teoma next.. I wonder

  21. Vivian

    March 2nd, 2008 at 4:39 pm

    Well at some point, when Google and MSN/Yahoo/Ask are squeezing the world, look out for Visvo.com and other like them which are TRUE SEARCH engines rather than ad engines masquerading as search engines

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