Berkowitz Leaves Ask - Joins MSN

[martinibuster]

Steve Berkowitz, who joined Ask in 2001 and helped revive it's struggling business has left, joining Microsoft to help it's internet division.

He will run marketing, sales and business development for MSN and the new Windows Live brand, which is meant to incorporate Microsoft's mail, instant message and search services.

Perhaps they need someone who can paint them a big picture.

Story on the NYTimes [nytimes.com].

[tedster]

The silly NYT is still talking about "Jeeves". I would be on the phone immediately if I worked for Ask.

Kevin Johnson, the head of the Microsoft division that includes Windows and Internet services, said Mr. Berkowitz would be a senior vice president, succeeding David Cole, who is going on leave in May.

Mr. Berkowitz, however, will have more limited responsibilities than Mr. Cole had. He will run marketing, sales and business development for MSN and the new Windows Live brand, which is meant to incorporate Microsoft's mail, instant message and search services. He will not oversee product development.

With MSN Search actually losing market share, Live is their best shot at some competitive magic, IMO. This will be fun to watch,

[wmuser]

It would be interesting to see if MS will gain because of him

[walkman]

>> helped revive it's struggling business

Ask is revived?

[deep_alley]

Well at least they realise they need to get their act together and are moving in that direction...lets see what actually changes...time will tell...

[Junanagoh]

Ask is revived?

Thats what I was wondering....

[JAB Creations]

Ask remains a distant but still alive search engine in regards to crawls and referals from their engine. To me they are the Opera of search engines (in at least the shares aspect).

[MichaelEng]

Apparently ask.com is in 5th place with 5.9% of the search market, and are hoping to move into 4th place, which is currently held by AOL(Google) behind MSN (3rd).

[abacuss]

Its good that MS is concentrating on their arena. Lets see what does Mr Steve Berkowitz do .. either unique or something different.