Gary Price has a post about the New Look and Features of Ask.com. In his post he writes:
One problem, from a marketing standpoint, is that many people, including librarians, educators, and the general public, have spent little time paying attention to what has been going on at Ask.com.
Why?
Old habits and beliefs die hard and, as I said earlier, many people still believe that Ask.com is the inferior product that it once was. That is no longer the case. In fact, it’s a goal to directly involve our profession in making Ask.com even better. That’s why your feedback/suggestions/comments are important.
I for one have not used Ask.com or its previous incarnation of Ask Jeeves very much. After reading Gary’s post, I spent a few minutes tinkering with the search engine. I didn’t spend enough time to give it a thorough review, but I’ll be sure to try using it a bit more in the future. If you primarily use Google, Gary offer convincing reasons to use other services:
In many cases the more choices the better. Google, Yahoo, MSN, Clusty and others are high quality, first rate products that we all use regularly. However, that doesn’t mean that Ask.com can’t also be one and isn’t worthy of your attention and knowledge. A great reference collection is filled with many choices and options. A great reference librarian knows about many of them.