Ask.com – Do they have the answer for a strong comeback?

Story first appeared on USA Today.com

Doug Leeds wants the folks who work for him to get "really silly."

The CEO of dot-com pioneer Ask.com, he's quietly helped bring the company back from the brink by focusing on its original intention — answering questions — and allowing his employees to throw out crazy ideas during weekly improv sessions.

"One of the things that inhibited innovation was that folks wanted everything to be perfect first," he says. "We just want to get people to talk, to get every idea out, to get really silly."

One nutty idea was paying $300 million for a company that was dragging down the New York Times Co.'s earnings — About.com. About was purchased by Ask parent IAC, and is a separate unit.

Leeds believed About — which offers a place for in-depth information on everything from parenting and baby tips to how to change oil on a car — could be integrated with Ask's questions-and-answer format.

"Ask is a place to ask questions," Leeds says. "Think of it like a library. About is a great set of books the librarian shows you for more information. It's the best source of reference material on the Web, and it wasn't being utilized fully by the New York Times."

That it dragged down the Times company doesn't matter. About on Ask is the "right place for the right user mindset," he says.

Ask began in 1996 as Ask Jeeves, a different form of search engine that responded to questions. The company dropped the Jeeves part of the name in 2005. The question and answers also got ditched, but returned in 2010.

Ask is now consistently a top 10 website, according to ComScore Media Metrix. It averaged 104 million visitors in December, and was the eighth most visited site. It began 2012 with 95.7 million visitors.

Financials are growing, too. It is a part of IAC's search division, which reported revenue of $370 million in the third quarter. That's up from $258.9 million in the year-ago quarter. The search unit also includes Dictionary.com. IAC also owns Match.com, Vimeo and The Daily Beast.

Ask's share of search is a small 3%, according to ComScore, compared with 66% for market leader Google.

However, even at 3%, the search market is so large "that even a sliver is a significant business," says Greg Sterling, a senior analyst with Opus Research. "Search is still 50% of all online advertising."

Ask has thrived by sticking around. "They have a loyal core following," Sterling says. "Ask also benefits from being used as a secondary search engine."

Interviewed at Ask's towering Oakland headquarters, which dominates the skyline here, Leeds says Ask's original mission was derailed by Google, which became really popular, really fast. Ask decided to shift gears to search, too. But after some lean years, it found that consumers still preferred the question-and-answer format from Ask.

"So we went back to the basics, and it's been very successful," Leeds says.

Questions are answered by tapping into sites such as Wikipedia and Dictionary.com, internally via its own staff, and asking users to chime in and answer as well. "We're using every method the Internet has."

It's also looking to showcase more content from About.com. A question about this year's crop of American Idol judges, for instance, pops up articles about next week's premiere from People and the New York Daily News, an About.com backgrounder on all the judges from the last 11 seasons of the show, and links to other Idol related questions.

For 2013, Leeds wants to see more use of About on Ask, as well as another new acquisition, nRelate, a company that offers suggested links to queries.

"Our users want to go deeper," Leeds says. "Right now, they ask a question, we answer it, and we move on to the next question. We want to have them explore their interests further. It's about content discovery."

Microsoft, Yahoo Face In-Depth Review of Search-Engine Accord

Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo! Inc. have been asked by the U.S. Justice Department for more details on a proposed Internet-search partnership, expanding the agency’s review of the agreement.

The request means regulators will do a more extensive examination, rather than approve the deal immediately. Microsoft predicted an in-depth review when the accord was announced in July, said company spokesman Jack Evans. He declined to comment on the contents of the request.

Over the course of the review, the companies expect to be asked about their search-engine investments, ad pricing and product plans, a person familiar with the matter said.

The outcome will shape the future of the market for Internet search ads, where Google has triple the U.S. sales of its two rivals. The companies may face more difficulty proving the deal won’t hurt competition as regulators step up oversight of the technology industry, said Michael Katz, a former chief economist in the Justice Department’s antitrust unit.

“The antitrust agencies are pretty skeptical of the argument that you need to be bigger to compete,” said Katz, now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “The Justice Department will respond, ‘Why can’t you get bigger by competing?’”

Under the partnership, signed in July, Yahoo will use Microsoft’s Bing search engine on its Web sites. Yahoo will sell ads that appear next to Web-search results, with the companies splitting the revenue.

Bing Investment

Even though the antitrust agency will scrutinize the deal closely, the companies probably can get it done as long as they do enough to persuade the Justice Department that the agreement doesn’t hurt competition, Katz said.

During the Justice Department’s review, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft expects to be asked to disclose its spending on Bing to ensure the company made enough investments to create a viable product, the person familiar with the matter said. Both companies also anticipate regulators will ask for their individual search-engine product plans so it can assess whether there’s an incentive to compete more or less vigorously as a result of the deal.

“Those plans will help the DOJ understand what the competitive impacts of the merger might be,” said Greg Neppl, an antitrust lawyer at Foley & Lardner LLP in Washington. If the department were to find the accord hinders innovation, it could seek to block the deal.

Ad Pricing

The government will also seek information on how the companies’ online-ad auctions operate and what might happen to prices as a result of the combination, the person said. While regulators will investigate pricing, it’s unlikely that they will dictate what prices will be, the person said.

The requests will help the agency determine whether to impose conditions to foster competition, or block the deal. Mountain View, California-based Google scrapped plans to team up with Yahoo last year after the Justice Department threatened to sue, saying the proposal would have helped them “become collaborators rather than competitors.”

“Google was dominant a year ago and is dominant today,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel. “Even if this is approved, Google organic seo will be dominant a year from now -- but if this agreement is approved, at least there is a chance for a more credible No. 2 to emerge.”

Laura Sweeney, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the agency is aware of the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo partnership, and declined to comment further.

Fully Cooperating

“Yahoo and Microsoft are cooperating fully with the Justice Department and firmly believe that the information they will be providing will confirm that this deal is not only good for both companies, but it is also good for advertisers, good for publishers and good for consumers,” Adam Grossberg, a Yahoo spokesman, said in an e-mail.

The companies are now responding to the latest request, which they received earlier this week, Microsoft’s Evans said yesterday. They still expect the deal to close on schedule.

Microsoft rose 22 cents to $25 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo added 67 cents to $15.45, while Google advanced $6.97 to $470.94. Microsoft has risen 29 percent this year, compared with a 27 percent gain at Yahoo and a 53 percent jump for Google.

“There has traditionally been a lot of competition online, and our experience is that competition brings about great things for users,” Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said in an e-mailed statement. “We’re interested to learn more about the deal.”

Of the three largest search engines, Google had 75 percent of search-ad spending in the U.S. last quarter, with the rest going to Microsoft and Yahoo, according to data from search-ad firm Efficient Frontier Inc. in Sunnyvale, California. The market should expand to $12 billion this year, according to New York researcher EMarketer Inc.

European Commission

In Europe, Microsoft is also likely to notify the European Commission about the agreement, said Neil Macehiter, a partner at Cambridge, England-based technology consultant Macehiter Ward-Dutton. If the commission gets involved, it will conduct an initial 25 working-day review, which can be extended by 90 days if the regulator has “serious doubts” about competition issues.

Last week, the Brussels-based commission put on hold Oracle Corp.’s $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems Inc., saying its initial probe suggested the deal may reduce competition and lead to higher prices.

“I’d bet on Microsoft-Yahoo prevailing because it would be difficult for Microsoft to leverage its position,” Macehiter said.

Google Partnership

Microsoft objected to a proposed partnership between Yahoo and Google last year, saying the accord would allow them to fix prices. Now the software maker is on the other side of the same argument, and will likely tell the agency the venture won’t raise prices, said Andre Barlow, a Washington-based lawyer who worked for the Justice Department’s antitrust division and is now a partner at Doyle Barlow & Mazard PLLC.

Advertisers probably will face questions on the deal too. Carl Fremont, executive vice president at Digitas, an online ad agency, said a Microsoft-Yahoo combination would force Google to keep on improving its search engine.

“From a product offering side, I believe it will be better over time,” said Fremont, whose firm is owned by Paris-based Publicis Groupe SA. “It creates new competition in the market.”

Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Draws Antitrust Scrutiny

By Information Week

Antitrust bodies in the U.S. and Europe are eyeing Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s search partnership with Internet portal Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) to ensure the deal doesn't run afoul of competition rules.

"As we said when the agreement was announced, we anticipated that this deal will be closely reviewed in the United States and EU, and discussions in both geographies continue," a Microsoft spokesman told the Reuters news agency Wednesday.

The spokesman said Microsoft remains confident that the deal will close sometime in 2010.

Microsoft and Yahoo struck a wide-ranging search partnership on July 29. Under the ten-year pact, Microsoft will place its Bing search engine on all Yahoo sites and, initially, keep 12% of the revenue from Yahoo-driven searches. Yahoo will handle sales and marketing for premium search ads for both its own properties and Microsoft's.

Microsoft is also committed to hire a minimum of 400 Yahoo employees on a full-time basis as it extends Bing to Yahoo's Web sites. It will also hire an additional 150 Yahoo workers to help with the transition.

Yahoo can terminate the arrangement if organic seo search traffic generated by the alliance falls below a specified percentage of Google's traffic. Yahoo also retains the right to expand the partnership by adding Microsoft's mapping and mobile search services to its Web properties.

Microsoft must submit to Yahoo copies of all data it collects from its sites while providing search services, according to an SEC filing.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has said that, by in effect outsourcing search to Microsoft, her company can save $200 million in annual capital expenditures through reduced spending on search-related operations. The companies said it could take up to two years for them to fully implement their agreement.

How Will ReCAPTCHA Help Google?

By Channel Web

Those aggravating strings of nonsensical words you have to key into your computer when trying to send someone an e-mail or buy tickets online -- they're called CAPTCHAs -- are actually doing a job that Google (NSDQ:GOOG) finds pretty valuable. But in its zeal to teach computers to, in essence, "read," Google may be chipping away at the ability of CAPTCHAs to provide security.

Google will buy ReCAPTCHA, a company that provides CAPTCHAs to help protect more than 100,000 Web sites from spam and fraud. Financial terms were not disclosed.

CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) are often created from old pieces of text, including books and newspapers.

Computers, through programs called "spiders" or "robots," find it hard to recognize those words because the ink and paper have degraded over time. So far, CAPTCHA programs have been successful in deflecting robotic attacks because the spiders can't recognize the text.

But in addition, the technology can help Google in its large-scale -- and controversial -- text scanning projects such as Google Books and Google News Archive Search.

Google wants the technology because as users decipher the jumbled characters with CAPTCHAs, the software "learns" to interpret those words during organic seo searches.

The technology that Google now uses to scan documents, Optical Character Reader Recognition, stumbles over the translation of print that's faded and worn. ReCAPTCHA's Web site illustrates that accuracy problem.

Because ReCAPTCHA uses old text from old print publications and users then type them in as a CAPTCHA, users teach computers to read the scanned text. Having the text version of documents is beneficial because it facilitates searching and renders it easily on mobile devices. ReCAPTCHA's slogan, "Stop Spam. Read Books," seems to be a good fit with Google's plan.

Therein may lie the rub, however. As we teach computers to read, CAPTCHAs may lose their appeal as a security mechanism. Of course, as hackers' malicious software also becomes more sophisticated, the distorted character strategy would become threatened anyway. Google's next step may need to address that security concern.

MSN Search Director to Leave Microsoft

Another Microsoft search executive is rumored to be leaving the company. The latest news broke in early March 2007 as Microsoft continues to struggle to compete with Google in Internet search.

According to Reuters news service, the Microsoft executive most responsible for closing the gap on Web search with Google is leaving MSN. Chris Payne, corporate vice president of the new Windows Live Search, is leaving Microsoft to start his own company in Seattle, said the source, who asked not to be identified. Microsoft representatives declined to comment.

The news comes at a time when Microsoft continues to struggle for share of the keyword search market against Google. Microsoft has overhauled MSN and related search products several times in the last two years with many new looks and features.

Google still handles over 3 billion keyword search queries monthly, while Microsoft averages just over 700 million searches a month according to the latest comScore numbers.

Microsoft has improved its share of the keyword search pie however the market share increases have only been marginal.

Mr. Payne, who rejoined Microsoft in 2001 after a three-year stint at Amazon.com, played a key role in persuading the company to develop its own search engine instead of relying on Yahoo to power MSN search results. Prior to Amazon, Payne spent eight years at Microsoft.

Microsoft's failure to recognize the keyword search medium and late start in the search medium has kept MSN at a huge disadvantage versus Google and Yahoo. Those companies made billions selling advertising tied to keyword search results while Microsoft scrambled to build a search business model of its own.

Payne could become the second executive from Microsoft's Internet arm in the past week planning to leave the company. Blake Irving, a Microsoft vice president who oversees the new MSN AdCenter that sells ads next to search results, also plans to retire from Microsoft.