Ask.com, in a new period of cost cutting and belt tightening, has ditched its home-grown mapping product on Ask City and outsourced that function to Microsoft’s able Virtual Earth platform. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land has more details.
Former Ask CEO Jim Lanzone was very proud of the Ask City product, which, with its three panel approach, was something of a model for Ask’s highly innovative “3D” design. But key people have left the Ask team (e.g., Ryan Massie) and so it makes logical sense that much of the service would be outsourced at this point.
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