mm1220 - 3:16 pm on Mar 4, 2006 (gmt 0)

Fox had sassy shows and right-wing news coverage to draw market share away from the mainstream networks. Unless Ask can replace Jeeves with Homer Simpson or Bill O'Reilly, it's going to be like a new librarian trying to win patrons away from another (and much more popular) librarian.

You could equally argue that Fox's challenge was tougher than the one facing Ask. Fox was working with the same material that mainstream networks had (same news headlines, same weather, same sports results) plus they didn't have the clout at the start to get high profile guests. However, by presenting the same news material in a different fashion they aquired their niche audience.

Ask can do the same by simply returning different results. For many broad searches there are a whole host of websites that would be eligible for p.1 of an engine's SERPS (not just 10). Maybe they should ensure that they serve different, yet still relevant, results to Google.

People will try Ask if they think it's unique and can find stuff Google can't (even if G has found the sites but stuck them on page 2/3/4.)