Sphinn Home » Ask.com
Avatar Went Hot: March 4, 2008 - 8:45 pm
Posted By: DavidWallace 126 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.bruceclay.com)
Category: Ask.com
Lisa barone writes, "Barry Schwartz twittered this morning that he had news that would make me sad but wouldn’t elaborate. Then, a few hours ago the story went live on Search Engine Land: IAC Cuts 8% of Ask.com & Kills Search Engine. That bullet was followed with another: All Things Must Pass. Gary Price, a good friend and industry mentor, has left Ask.com. My heart was shattered, with very real tears streaming down my face. And though I’ve since dried them, as I write this I can feel them creeping back up. Ask was personal to me, and those who know me understand that."
7 Comments     

Comments

from EricLander 126 days ago #
Votes: 1 | Vote:
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So, this article is a bit of a mixed bag for me.  As recently as this morning, I was throwing Ask.com under the bus.  That includes comments I made TO Lisa.  So, I'm possibly part of the people she speaks about in her article.

With that said, this article is a must read because it forced me to see the other side of the coin.  Very few people are passionate about what they do and the industry they work in.

Lisa is NOT one of those people.

from mvandemar 126 days ago #
Votes: 0 | Vote:
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Very few people are passionate about what they do and the industry they work in. Lisa is NOT one of those people.

I'm sorry, slightly confused... you are saying that Lisa is not passionate about her work or the industry? Why do you feel that way?

from martinibuster 125 days ago #
Votes: 0 | Vote:
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Ask is becoming a married  women's vertical focusing on housework, cooking, and children according to their latest statements.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/03/04/financial/f170722S36.DTL&tsp=1

;)-Y

from David 125 days ago #
Votes: 0 | Vote:
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Brilliant idea.....

from IncrediBILL 125 days ago #
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One less source for search engine parties at the trade shows

from jamiec 125 days ago #
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just as Marketing Charts report an increase in Ask search share too...

from quumf 125 days ago #
Votes: 1 | Vote:
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very disappointing development.  1 less innovative competitor to Google.  What's really interesting is that 8% of the workforce at Ask is 40 people.  That means that the entire search engine was run by ~500 people.
Perhaps less money spent on obtuse advertising, and more spent on getting the best people to work for them would have meant that they could have had a ranking algorithm that they could have been proud to give to users (and which users would have benefited from) rather than simply creating pages that gave enough semantic information to generate the highest paying contextual adverts from Google for any given query.
Seriously.  Compare the Adsense you see on Ask against the PPC results in Google. 


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