Main Feed - RSS 2.0
Last year, Barry Diller’s IAC purchased Ask Jeeves for $1.85 Billion USD. It was a whopping sum for a search engine company which had approximately 1.5% market share. Ask Jeeves, recently rebranded simply “ask.com” and it’s butler are a well known brand name on the Internet. Teoma, one of the properties included in the deal is a fantastic quality search engine, delivering high quality results, but widely acknowledge to be largely unused.
Before I left for Europe, I saw a note posted by Barry Schwartz’s (aka Rusty Brick) at Search Engine Roundtable. The comment referred to a ClickZ article about a Nielsen / NetRatings report which showed that Ask Jeeves’ market share had grown to 2.6%.
I’ve never met Barry, but I do read his work, and enjoy it. Our paths have crossed at conferences, but that’s not really “meeting” anyone. I do know that he, like many in our industry, has an affinity for Ask Jeeves. I’ve often lamented how Teoma delivers consistently strong, highly relevant results, but never seems to be used by many people, who get upset with poor quality results elsewhere.
