Ask.com Goes for Broke With New Look

There seems to be little gain to trying to out-Google Google, so several smaller search companies are going in different directions. Ask.com has dramatically changed its search results, returning not just links to resources around the Web but also video, blogs, maps and song clips, according to search guru John Battelle's blog. His summary: “This is Ask, a perennial 4th place player in an increasingly one player market, doing what only a 4th place player can do: Throwing caution to the wind and betting on a new interface, one that abandons the ‘ten blue links’ approach that has dominated search for so long.” Ask, which currently gets about 5 percent of all Web searches, is in the midst of a $100 million ad campaign, crafted by MDC Partners' Crispin Porter + Bogusky. More ...