Ask Ask
I still remember when I first discovered Google search. It was still very much in WOM (word of mouth) mode. From the first search, it was love. Why? Mainly because it did what, and only what, a search engine was supposed to do: it found websites that provided information relevant to your search string. Time after time, Google returned the best results for a given search.
Prior to Google, I had been an ecumenical searcher, bouncing from Yahoo to Hotbot to AltaVista and back again. After Google, I never looked back.
I am still a big fan of Google, but there are those who feel that Google has become too much of a good thing: too big, too powerful, too intrusive, to all-inclusive. Translate that to: too dangerous.
Is Ask.com the comeuppance that Google might need?
I'm not sure, but I am intrigued by the way Ask provides search results. Take for instance, a search return on Renaissance composer, Palestrina.
Unlike Google's plain vanilla offering, and unlike Yahoo's over-crowded, ad-laden interface, Ask offers content organized intelligently: narrow your search, or expand your search, look for related names, buy a product, or view related images. And encyclopedia entry is conveniently available right on the results page to help you see if you're on the right track. And you get a quirky little result: the local time in Palestrina, Italy.
This kind of result makes sense given the genesis of Ask:
SearchEngineHistory.com tells us: "In April of 1997 Ask Jeeves was launched as a natural language search engine. Ask Jeeves used human editors to try to match search queries. Ask was powered by DirectHit for a while, which aimed to rank results based on their popularity, but that technology proved to easy to spam as the core algorithm component. In 2000 the Teoma search engine was released, which uses clustering to organize sites by Subject Specific Popularity, which is another way of saying they tried to find local web communities. In 2001 Ask Jeeves bought Teoma to replace the DirectHit search technology.
On Mar 4, 2004, Ask Jeeves agreed to acquire Interactive Search Holdings for 9.3 million shares of common stock and options and pay $150 million in cash. On March 21, 2005 Barry Diller's IAC agreed to acquire Ask Jeeves for 1.85 billion dollars. IAC owns many popular websites like Match.com, Ticketmaster.com, and Citysearch.com, and is promoting Ask across their other properties. In 2006 Ask Jeeves was renamed to Ask, and they killed the separate Teoma brand."
Rather than relying on something like Google's famous Page Rank (which identifies linked-to sites as being most relevant), Ask relies on what it called "ExpertRank," which seeks to identify "the most authoritative sites on the web. With Ask search technology, it's not just about who's biggest: it's about who'se best." In other words, they attempt to identify popularity among pages considered to be experts on the topic of your search. (What Ask called "subject-specific" popularity.)
I can't say that Ask.com will necessarily replace Google for me - but I'm glad that there is finally an alternative that challenges to Google's search hegemony. (BTW, on Ask.come, you can type in "define:hegemony" for a quick definition, just like on Google!)
I still remember when I first discovered Google search. It was still very much in WOM (word of mouth) mode. From the first search, it was love. Why? Mainly because it did what, and only what, a search engine was supposed to do: it found websites that provided information relevant to your search string. Time after time, Google returned the best results for a given search.
Prior to Google, I had been an ecumenical searcher, bouncing from Yahoo to Hotbot to AltaVista and back again. After Google, I never looked back.
I am still a big fan of Google, but there are those who feel that Google has become too much of a good thing: too big, too powerful, too intrusive, to all-inclusive. Translate that to: too dangerous.
Is Ask.com the comeuppance that Google might need?
I'm not sure, but I am intrigued by the way Ask provides search results. Take for instance, a search return on Renaissance composer, Palestrina.
Unlike Google's plain vanilla offering, and unlike Yahoo's over-crowded, ad-laden interface, Ask offers content organized intelligently: narrow your search, or expand your search, look for related names, buy a product, or view related images. And encyclopedia entry is conveniently available right on the results page to help you see if you're on the right track. And you get a quirky little result: the local time in Palestrina, Italy.
This kind of result makes sense given the genesis of Ask:
SearchEngineHistory.com tells us: "In April of 1997 Ask Jeeves was launched as a natural language search engine. Ask Jeeves used human editors to try to match search queries. Ask was powered by DirectHit for a while, which aimed to rank results based on their popularity, but that technology proved to easy to spam as the core algorithm component. In 2000 the Teoma search engine was released, which uses clustering to organize sites by Subject Specific Popularity, which is another way of saying they tried to find local web communities. In 2001 Ask Jeeves bought Teoma to replace the DirectHit search technology.
On Mar 4, 2004, Ask Jeeves agreed to acquire Interactive Search Holdings for 9.3 million shares of common stock and options and pay $150 million in cash. On March 21, 2005 Barry Diller's IAC agreed to acquire Ask Jeeves for 1.85 billion dollars. IAC owns many popular websites like Match.com, Ticketmaster.com, and Citysearch.com, and is promoting Ask across their other properties. In 2006 Ask Jeeves was renamed to Ask, and they killed the separate Teoma brand."
Rather than relying on something like Google's famous Page Rank (which identifies linked-to sites as being most relevant), Ask relies on what it called "ExpertRank," which seeks to identify "the most authoritative sites on the web. With Ask search technology, it's not just about who's biggest: it's about who'se best." In other words, they attempt to identify popularity among pages considered to be experts on the topic of your search. (What Ask called "subject-specific" popularity.)
I can't say that Ask.com will necessarily replace Google for me - but I'm glad that there is finally an alternative that challenges to Google's search hegemony. (BTW, on Ask.come, you can type in "define:hegemony" for a quick definition, just like on Google!)
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