IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s (NASDAQ: IACI) Ask.com is becoming a nice competitive force, it seems, in the tertiary market for Internet search services. I personally use Ask.com everyday for certain things, as it offers some features that Google, Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) lacks and seems more suited to my work flow in certain instances. While I still prefer and use Google for most Internet searching, I can see why the Ask.com is making a run to recruit more and more customers. In fact, it may overtake Time Warner Inc.'s (NYSE:TWX) AOL Search (powered by Google) as the fourth-largest search product soon.
Is the product that good? In many respects, yes it is. The massive marketing campaign that the company has waged since the summer is dovetailing a little bit, and although Ask.com's market share is piddly compared to Google, Yahoo!, Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), the product stands up there with the best of them.
Although in all likelihood Ask.com won't ever displace Google, it will continue to be a player in this field I'll bet. It doesn't need to be the market leader to get revenues and grow them. Even a small half-percent usage gain in customers translates to huge numbers in the total available market, I would suspect.
So, it's a battle between Ask.com and AOL Search for the fourth spot in the Internet search realm. Stay tuned for all 13 rounds of this prize fight.
Will Rich Ross really have a positive impact on Disney's movie operations?
Consumers sick of recession, may spend extra on holidays
Corrections, seasonality and Santa Claus
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-07-2006 @ 1:56PM
Joe said...
First, AOL Search is Google Search with an AOL brand. Not much inovation there. The only reason why it ranks high is because it's put in front of so many AOL Members. As more members leave AOL it's search will continue to decline in ranking. Does that mean that Ask is really gaining ground?? Does it really need to "challenge" AOL to over take it or will time be the real "challenge" to AOL.