Ask.com's Rising Star

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Saturday June 3, 2006 @01:10AM from the going-up dept.

hdtv writes "Fortune magazine takes a look at Ask.com, a site originally designed to respond to queries in human language that grew into a full-blown search engine after the Teoma acquisition. According to Fortune, Ask.com has many features not available with rivals -- topic clusters, quick facts from Wikipedia on the search page, and, (what counts most) fewer ads than any of the rivals. Currently Ask.com maintains 5.9% share, a share that Fortune is sure will grow."

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Re:"Quick Facts from Wikipedia" ??? by greenhollow · 2006-06-03 01:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

This is the same as trusting the newspapers, tv sound bytes and what celebrities say. You cannot make serious decisions about anything unless you do in depth research and take all sides into consideration.

I call this "thinking". I do no think it is exclusive to any generation.
Re:Lack of ads counts most? by BluhDeBluh · 2006-06-03 01:39 · Score: 4, Informative

Text ads are difficult to Adblock - you can Greasemonkey them, but it's hassle. On top of that, the ones on ask.com seem to be very annoying - a long list that takes half the page, so they are very difficult to ignore. I prefer Google's less prominent ones.
What about punctuation? by corsec67 · 2006-06-03 01:57 · Score: 4, Interesting

The next thing I want in a search engine is for punctuation to be a part of the search.
For example, how do you search for the difference between the following 2 LaTeX commands:
\circle \circle*
(I know the answer now, but I had to look it up in my reference book, as google was just about worthless for my "latex star" query)

--
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
"how many fingers does a human being have?" by Anonymous Coward · 2006-06-03 02:41 · Score: 5, Funny

Ask.com's first result is a webpage on How many fingers can you fit into your ass?. Now that's useful... ;)
Deceptive article... by cswiger2005 · 2006-06-03 02:53 · Score: 5, Informative

quick facts from Wikipedia on the search page, and, (what counts most) fewer ads than any of the rivals
This is obviously untrue-- there are zero ads on Wikipedia, which seems to be where ask.com has lifted much of the content only to wrap it in paid-for-placement ad banners. Do a search on ask.com and you'll get the top-3 sponsored paid ad links first, then the top-ten actual search results, and then another 5 sponsored paid ad links. By my count, about forty percent of the links ask.com shows you when you search are ad links.
Next, we could consider the author, who isn't identified by name or email address, but by a link to a freshly registered domain that's just over two weeks old:
Registrant: Digital Media Ventures LLC 701 First Ave Sunnyvale, CA 94089 US Domain name: PLASMA-HDTV-PRICES.COM Administrative Contact: Alexander Moskalyuk, - alex@moskalyuk.com 701 First Ave Sunnyvale, CA 94089 US 4083492977 Fax: 4083492977 Technical Contact: Alexander Moskalyuk, - alex@moskalyuk.com 701 First Ave Sunnyvale, CA 94089 US 4083492977 Fax: 4083492977 Record last updated on 19-May-2006. Record expires on 13-May-2007. Record created on 13-May-2006. Domain servers in listed order: NS1.DREAMHOST.COM 66.33.206.206 NS2.DREAMHOST.COM 66.201.54.66

View the "page info" and take a look at the links, this seems to be nothing more than an article by a shill who is getting paid to promote products and/or do market research on people who read Slashdot.

--
"The human race's favorite method for being in control of the facts is to ignore them." -Celia Green
Ask.com: Google's up-and-coming rival?! by xxxJonBoyxxx · 2006-06-03 02:53 · Score: 5, Interesting

The title of the article is "Ask.com: Google's up-and-coming rival", but I still want to know (and this is the third time I've asked):
Why is Ask.com considered a Google "rival" if it primarily serves Google ads?
(How do I know? It serves an ad I've only placed through Google.)