Barry Diller launched the new look Butler-less Ask at the Search Engine Strategies show in New York revealing that Ask has a China-based R & D team working on a local search engine for China. He also said that engines trading locally are businesses and have to abide by local laws.
In a talk directed largely at an American audience, Diller gave little emphasis to worldwide expansion – Ask Deutschland and Espana getting brief mentions and no reference was made to the further rollout of Ask in France, Italy, Sweden or any other major countries – although clearly projects such as these are in that pipeline.
Surely if Ask is going to compete and play in the the “centre park of search” – Diller’s reason for dumping the Butler – it will have to take more of an active part in world search? It would have been useful to have had a more international perspective from Diller.
