We have still not been able to get the full picture of what is happening with Ask.com.

Various quotes from company representatives have been interpreted to mean that Ask is abandoning search in order to turn Ask.com into a kind of information portal for married women, replacing its own Teoma search engine technology with Google’s.

It should be noted, though, that Nicholas Graham of Ask vehemently denies this. Over at Sphinn he says that there “really, really - really! - is no truth to these rumors about Teoma getting taken out to the woodshed.”

Still, the fact that search engine expert Gary Price is leaving the company is a clear sign that there is some truth in the rumors. Ask is laying off some eight percent of its staff. Letting go of talent like this can hardly be combined with a strategy including a high quality search technology like Ask’s.

Danny Sullivan puts it this way:

But Barry, new CEO Jim Sacka, whomever is left — we don’t believe you. We know you’re just going to hand it all over to Google. C’mon, it’s obvious. You don’t have any heart left in the new organization to be running your own tech.

We find the idea of going after women ludicrous.

It might be that the majority of the present Ask users are women, but that is because they like the search engine, not because they are looking for an information portal catering to women’s interests (which apparently are “entertainment and health“!).

This is a sad story, indeed. As our readers may have noticed we have found Ask’s recent innovations to be very useful, especially when it comes to its new user interface.

Still, we do see Ask’s problem. Running a company is not all about idealism and developing superb technologies, it is also about making money. And it must be hard to be the smaller sibling in the search engine race.

See also: Search Community Reaction to Ask.com New Search Strategy