Ask.com launches in France, Italy and the Netherlands

Ask, having ditched its butler, has announced that it is going after the French, Italian and Dutch search market

8 March 2006 11:03 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Ask having ditched its butler, has announced that it is going after the French, Italian and Dutch search market with the launch of Ask.com France, Ask.com Italia and Ask.com Nederland.

“With the help of Ask.com, internet users in France, Italy and the Netherlands will now be able to get what they are looking for faster”, said Steve Berkowitz, CEO of Ask.com.

The sites, still in beta utilise Ask.com's proprietary algorithmic search technology, which ranks results based on popularity within topic communities on the Web, rather than simply by link popularity.

In addition, Ask France, Italia and Nederland include innovative features such as the Ask.com Toolbox, which provides customisable homepage shortcuts to tools including Image Search and MyStuff, the first personalized search service for saving, sharing, and organising search results.

The beta sites will also feature Binoculars, a preview tool that allows searchers to preview websites by simply mousing over the binoculars icon within their search results; Family Filter, a feature protecting users from viewing unwanted adult content; and Page Translation (initially only available on Ask France), which translates English-language pages into French.

Full tags

Software, Online, Search engines, Ask