Questions for the Ask.com Man
Algorithms aside, how do you plan on gaining ground on a company—Google—whose name has become synonymous with search?
What's surprising is that we're not having much trouble in that area. We've been the fastest-growing search engine every month since we relaunched. We have over 25 million people a month in the U.S. and 40 million worldwide per month using Ask. Collectively, Ask is the seventh-largest Web property in the United States, ahead of Amazon and the New York Times. What's hard is to make people break their habit of using a different search engine. They get locked in.
Do you think there is room for you to grow?
The average person uses two or more search engines a month. It's not a zero-sum game. I equate it to the Model T. When the Model T came out, everybody was so happy they could drive from point A to point B, no one felt they needed a different car from someone else. We could all have the same black box with a steering wheel. But as time went on, drivers' needs evolved. They needed better ergonomics. They needed faster. They needed a different color. In search, Ask is truly the only other pure search brand to Google. The other players that have search market share are portals. Ask stands for search alone.
Is your audience different than theirs?
It's a more discerning searcher; it tends to be more professional, more urban or suburban, where getting better search matters. There's a part of the market that uses whatever search engine is in front of them at the moment. That's where portals get a lot of their traffic. We call them convenience search or lazy search.
You competed hard against Google for the right to provide search and ads to MySpace. Google won. Why?
The good news is that we were in that game primarily because some executives at Fox and MySpace admired our product from a user point of view. They liked the tools and the features and the search engine and the user interface. At the end of the day, though, it became a very expensive deal. We couldn't stay in the game in a way that was financially sensible for us.
That's the problem with competing against Google. Larry Page and Sergey Brin just bought a 767 for their personal use. What do you fly?
I fly United. [Laughs.] Premium economy, if I'm lucky. I'm about to pass the 100,000-mile mark this year, so maybe I can get some better upgrades next year.
Why do so many people still think of Ask as an also-ran?
I think part of that is based on the sheer mass of Google in popular culture today. I really don't believe any brand in history, including Coke, has ever had this much media love. The reality is that Google does not even own 50 percent of market share in the United States—and is just now, with Ask, having a competitor that is a stand-alone search engine beating it at its own game in several ways. Our track record so far should be impressive, because frankly it's been like a 10-handicap golfer beating a scratch golfer with fewer clubs in our bag.
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