• Search Engine Journal , Friday, March 14, 2008 1:34 PM

Speculation is still swirling about whether Ask will still be a viable alternative in the core search space--and what the market would look like if the "Little Search Engine that Could" folds or hands the reigns over to Google. Loren Baker argues that a new alternative would step in to fill the void--kind of like Fox did in the '80s, when TV viewers only had the big three networks to choose from.

Baker serves up a dozen alternative search engines that could feasibly pick up Ask's slack. AOL for example, has bulked up in terms of multimedia search with acquisitions like Truveo and Quigo--and Baker says that whether it bought Ask's Teoma technology or not, the Web giant would likely "become a major player in the search field and challenge the Yahoo, Google and Microsoft machines by 2010."

Gigablast is another alternative, Baker says, an engine that like Google, relies heavily on links and anchor text with its algorithm--but unlike the giant, has managed to survive for 8 years without selling ads. He also adds semantic search engines like Hakia and PowerSet to the mix, as well as the open search experiment pioneered by Wikia Search.

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