It looks like faithful butler Jeeves will finally be taking his retirement.
Bloomberg is reporting that IAC/InterActiveCorp - which owns Ask Jeeves, or simply Ask, as it's called in the US - will be laying off 130 engineers as the company ceases to develop its own search algorithms. The remainder will be transferred to a consolidated California office to work on other projects while the site's search capabilities will be handled by a third-party provider.
According to group chairman and CEO Barry Diller, "we've realized in the last few years you can't compete head on with Google".
Ask President Doug Leeds elaborated by saying that "it's become this huge juggernaut of a company that we really thought we could compete against by innovating. We did a great job of holding our market share but it wasn't enough".
Market research attributes around 65 per cent of the US search-market to Google, compared to less than two per cent for Ask.
The company will continue to run its question and answer service, and resources that are no longer being used to develop a search algorithm are likely to be reinvested into this side of the business. However, competition will be fierce in what is expected to be a rapidly growing sector.
Barry Diller made headlines in 2005 when he purchased the search engine for $1.85 billion in a bid to challenge Google's dominance of the market. However, the company struggled and was unable to increase its market share. The associated browser toolbar, on the other hand, has been very successful and is reported to be responsible for Ask's recent growth in revenue.
