As IAC continues to sharpen its focus, we have made the decision to discontinue our search business, which includes Ask.com. After 25 years of answering the world's questions, Ask.com officially closed on May 1, 2026.
I tend to use different search engines for different purposes. For example, when I want better privacy, I use DuckDuckGo. When shopping, I might use Amazon, and if I need AI, I might opt for Perplexity. In other words, multiple configured search engines are necessary. For most browsers, you configure individual search engines. Some browsers even allow you to configure a search engine such that it'll be used by first typing a keyword in the address bar (such as duck for DuckDuckGo).
We found 410,592 total mentions of the keywords between 9 June 2020 and 3 July 2025, and used Brandwatch's ability to separate mentions by source in order to find which sources hosted the highest volumes of mentions,
For decades now, Google has been the unquestioned champion of search-our digital oracle, the first and last stop for every question, from "What's the best pizza place near me?" to "How many protons are in a carbon atom?" But here's the key difference now: while Google has started to incorporate AI with features like AI Overviews and the new AI Mode, a traditional keyword search is great for finding facts, but not so great at understanding context.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google is testing an Ask AI Mode anything carousel feature. Bing is testing an updated Copilot product search box. Google Merchant Center allows you to use your own brand name in your short title. Google Discover was showing the publisher's name twice, it was a bug. Plus, I am offline today for Sukkos, so this email was pre-written
When Google became the dominant search engine around 2004, not everyone was happy. Everyone from book publishers to music studios blasted the company for helping itself to copyrighted content without paying. The search giant eventually smoothed things over but now, twenty years later, Google has become the media industry's villain all over again-this time for gobbling that same content to train its AI tools.
According to PartnerCentric, Gen Z-ers are now favoring social media platforms over Google in terms of shopping, with TikTok and Pinterest preferred over traditional search engines.
