According to Forbe’s Ask.com has finally thrown in the towel to fighting off the Google. They realized that they can’t compete under their current model. They decided to focus all of their energy on attractive married women. No it’s not what you think its for, get your mind out of the gutter. According to Forbes here is what the search engine will focus on:

The leaner Oakland-based search company will be retooled as a homemaker’s resource providing answers to queries about cooking, gardening and health. The target audience will be married women living in the American South and Midwest.

Investors did not seem to think this was a great idea, but did like it somewhat. I disagree completely I think this is a GREAT idea. I am for more vertical search engines. The Google results are not relevant to everyone, and although they are trying to create personalized search, I think that Ask is on the right track. This also supports an earlier post about Vertical Search stealing Google Search Share in the future.

Ask.com the little search engine that could, has finally come out with another progressive feature to separate itself from the pack. The feature is called Ask Eraser, and unlike other search engines, it is an opt out feature to make sure your searches are not saved in their database. With the recent Yahoo! Leaking Data and even more recently Facebooks Beacon debacle this is a great step by Ask.com.

If you want to keep your information safe then I strongly recommend you start using Ask. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are not currently allowing for this feature. Lets see how quickly they will follow suit.

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