My Comments About Ask3D

I’ve spoken to lots of press people about Ask3D and there are lots of comments out there from me accordingly. Some of those comments seem contradictory. I’ve had a couple of email exchanges with people about it. So I feel compelled to clarify:

Here’s what I think:

• Ask3D is a big improvement over the old Ask
• In some ways it definitely points to the future of search (at least in term of usability, content integration and interface changes)
• Results are not always better than Google (in my limited testing), but very helpful and in some cases dramatically better because of the additional/enhanced content
• Ask has done a great job integrating lots of content and more context into search results without creating clutter or confusion
• Ask will gain immediate notice/attention and some increase in usage. It will very likely build more frequency among the millions of “casual” Ask users who conduct searches on the engine once a month. It’s much harder to predict longer term market share trends.
• Despite Ask3D offering what is in many respects a superior user experience, Google’s brand is extremely powerful and its ongoing investment in search means that it will continue to lead the marketplace for some time to come. Ask could, however, make share gains against others.

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Related: Yahoo bets on personalization.

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