Ask.com is laying off roughly 130 engineers and giving up on its own all-purpose search technology. It plans to go back to its roots of answering simple questions instead of indexing everything on the Web. Its exit leaves only two general search providers: Google and Microsoft.
On a conference call to discuss IAC's second-quarter earnings, Barry Diller, the web company's chairman, at times sounded like he was taking personal responsibility for the failure to turn Ask.com into a viable alternative to Google.
Barry Diller's sprawling Internet company operates more than 50 diversified businesses in 30 countries, including high-traffic sites Ask.com, Match.com, CitySearch and Dictionary.com. It has gobs of cash and little debt. Yet its stock is stuck.
Internet giant Google grew its U.S. market share by a full percentage point to 71.6 percent in November, according to Web traffic tracker Hitwise. See how Google's gain impacted Bing and Yahoo.
