Goodbye AskJeeves

September 11, 2010 - It was inevitable and only a matter of time before Ask Jeeves threw in its search towel, unable to compete head on with Google.

Purchased in 2005 for $1.85 billion by IAC chairman, Barry Diller, Ask.com accounted for less than 2% of US search traffic. The company dismissed its serach engine engineers today in New Jersey and China, asking only twenty of the New Jersey engineers to relocate to Oakland, California where the search unit will consolidate its engineering operations and focus on developing its online Q&A service. Though the search engine was a loss, the Ask toolbar continues to be a revenue generator for IAC.

The beta Q&A released at the end of July has had a steady community growth with an answer to question ratino of 2:1. Another encouraging metric Ask has noted is that on average, users who are active within the community are asking two questions/day building on their competitive advantage that 30% of the searches on Ask.com are already in the form of a question.