Ask's Search Engine Has Been Retired

Ask.com has now officially shut down its search engine. Instead opting to focus on its own question and answer service - which they went back to in July of 2010. See our previous blog post about that here.

Instead they are going to be using either Google's or Bing's search results and dedicating their staff and engineers to the Question & Answer service.
According to New York Times the website will be re-branded as "Ask.com - What's Your Question?".

A move which sees Ask join the multitude of websites and search engines offering the question and answer service, of which Google has seen fantastic results for - and who will no doubt keep the crown of the best search provider. But where will Ask.com fit in? Only time will tell we guess.

Since its creation in 1996, Ask has employed hundreds of engineers and staff members across America & China, however with the recent downturn over there, they have had to lay off many members of staff and this new move sees them having to consolidate staff into its Bay Area HQ. This will mean staff and engineers across America and China having to relocate to the Californian HQ office.

Thanks to the New York Times for the original information in this blog post.