It went from AskJeeves.com to Ask.com and now IAC has folded its search engine and will use either Google or Bing to provide their searches, while concentrating on the question and answer service they returned to in July, New York Times reported.
"Ask.com, founded in 1996 as AskJeeves, was a question-and-answer search engine early on, but the quality of its responses was uneven. After Google showed how profitable providing algorithmic search results could be, Ask.com followed," NYT noted.
The site's title reflects this new direction "Ask.com - What's Your Question?"
My question is why. Is the salaries of the 130 plus engineers and other employees you are laying off that much that your search efforts were losing money?
"This is the best use of our scarce resources," Doug Leeds, Ask.com's president said. "There is a big untapped business here."
Guess he has not noticed the number of competitors in the Q&A space.
"The company will shut down its offices in both locations in the next few months, and will consolidate staff at its Bay Area headquarters, Ask.com confirmed. Some employees from NJ and China will be asked to relocate to California," PC mag reported.
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