Ask.com Goes In New Direction - The Way Of The Women

While the bout between Ask.com and Google hasn’t been as epic, as the likes of Duke and North Carolina, or Muhammad Ali And Joe Frazier, the rivalry has always been there. Over the years, it’s pretty much been one sided with Google’s domination of the search engine world. Now Ask.com looks as though it’s getting desperate, with a change of focus and massive layoffs.

I’m a good news first kind of guy so we’ll talk about the change of focus first. Ask.com is going from being a general search engine, to becoming a niche search tool for women. They will focus more on topics relating to women’s health, hobbies, and children.

Jim Safka, CEO of Ask.com speaks on the excitement of the change of focus, “Everyone at Ask is excited about our clear focus and the trajectory-changing results it will deliver”

It’s not all good news over at Ask.com as massive layoffs occured due to the scaling back of the search engine. Over 40 employees were laid off which equates to 8% of their workforce.

The decision of Ask.com to shift their focus from beating Google, to catering to a specific group is risky. But if it turns out to be successful it will be interesting to see if other search engines rallying to take over Google will follow suit and narrow their focus.