Not to say Ask.com is anything like a pimple but we are talking relative size here. The question is, can a search engine that is 1/17th the size of the industry leader run a profitable business model? The answer is, YES!
Forbes is reporting that Jim Safka, head of Ask.com announced his company will acquire Lexico, the owner of sites including Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com. The deal has an estimated acquisition value of over $100 million dollars.
Back in March Ask laid off just under 10% of it’s workforce and decided to focus on women above 30 and web searchers looking for answers to questions about health, fitness and entertainment because it appears this niche made up a majority of their user base. With only a shrinking 4% share of searches Ask seems to be holding on by a thread. There has even been speculation that they would soon be dropping its own search algorithm in favor of licensing Google’s search technology.
Safka denies this claim and say that the new Lexico acquisition is to take advantage of current Ask.com users that tend use full-sentence questions three times as often as users of other search engines. So for now it looks like Ask.com will keep up the fight and just try not to go head on with Google but instead to attempt some innovative side-steps in hope of capturing a bit more market share and perhaps some more loyal customers.
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