Is Ask.com poised to challenge AOL search?

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.