Google Wins Again: Ask.com Goes Niche

InterActiveCorp bought ask.com and affiliated sites for nearly $2.5 billion two and a half years ago. They thought they could play hard against Google. Nope. Now they’re laying off forty employees and turning ask.com into a niche search engine aimed at married southern women looking for recipe and hobby information.

Ask.com scales back in makeover:

The decision to cater to married women primarily living in the southern and midwestern United States comes after Ask spent years trying to build a better all-purpose search engine than Google.

Meanwhile, Yahoo and Time-Warner are involved in talks to fend off Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo. The deal would have Yahoo acquire Time-Warner’s AOL division and Time-Warner would take a stake in Yahoo.

Vint Cerf - Tracking the Internet into the 21st Century

It’s 82 and a half minutes (some of which are introductory remarks).