April 19, 2006 | Wednesday

Barry Diller’s Ask: Anything but small

By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in Quotations |Search Engines |Ask |Google |Yahoo |Microsoft

In an interview with search guru John Battelle, Jim Lanzone of Ask puts the company - and the market - in perspective:

When it comes to users and traffic, at 6% we may be small relative to GYM, but we’re still a top player in the #1 activity online outside of email. We’re anything but small.

GYM = Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Lanzone also points out that constant comparisons between Ask and Google result in skewed views of the search marketplace:

In terms of our size, we may be small relative to Google, but I think this needs to be put into perspective in a couple of ways. First, as a business, remember that a 1 point gain in market share for Ask (from 6% to 7% share) is a 15% increase in share of queries. The way our business works, that’s also likely a 15% increase in share of revenue. So just one point of share has an incredible impact on our business growth, and I think people forget that because they’re comparing us to Google, rather than to our own growth curve...[I]t’s not a zero-sum game.