Ask.com getting rid of Teoma and moving to Google?

Not surprising – but given all the hype of Teoma at Search Engine Strategies and other search conferences I attended in 2004, 2005 and 2006, one wonders what went wrong?

Ask.com’s Search Engine Share went up even – but maybe it’s not really about the search results as much as the Ask.com 3D Interface – maybe the Search Results and where the come from are now a “non-issue” which few really caring anymore about what powers the results (if they ever cared).

As reported tonight in TechCrunch –Ask May Dump Teoma For Google, Layoff 100 People:

“…According to Silicon Alley Insider, Ask may abandon or selling its Teoma search engine in favor of using Google for its search results. Teoma has powered Ask since it was acquired in September 2001. The decision will result in “bad news for Ask Engineers.”

Paid Content puts the downsizing figure at 100 in April, although they note that the final decision on the switch to Google hasn’t been signed off on yet.

The decision to abandon Ask’s in-house search engine comes following a $100 million advertising campaign in 2007 that succeeded in growing Ask’s market share, but not to a significant level in the overall market.”

This gets me to go off on a rant about how Technology is not the answer. People don’t care about technological improvements – because as soon as you come up with them, your competitors can match it.

This goes back to Ask+Teoma – did it work? Teoma was soposed to be build to be much more relevant than Google because it based rankings on communities of searchers and not so much on the page rank of back links.

But who cares today? Not even IAC, in fact, they’re thinking of putting Teoma in mothballs.