ask.com's corporate blog

Ask.com has a corporate blog that I found through simply blogsearching "google corporate blog." I thought I'd start at the source of this vast blog world by analyzing Google's own blog, but that was too simple.

http://blog.ask.com/ , at first, seems like it's just one huge advertisment for itself, and it is. The posts are filled with recent additions of search tools, such as maps, mobile searching for cell phones, and general searching stratagies. I think I was expecting more of a "this is how our day was" kind of blog, but again, that's what I'm used to. Ask.com's blog is perhaps what I should be expecting out of a corporate blog, because corporations have bigger things to talk about than daily shenanigans. They know their readers want to have the newest and the best products, so they cater to that, advertising the afformentioned improved searches, map searches, and mobile adaptations of thier search features. Ask.com is trying to get ahead of the competition by doing all they can for the consumer.

The layout of Ask.com's blog is also very advertisment-esque, being filled with screenshots of thier searches and numerous links to Ask.com. I find this almost anoying, because at the top, there's a giant search bar boasting a blog search as well as a web search. I think that's enough of an advertisment for their search engine, and they really don't need to link themselves to Ask.com in nearly every post.

I found it particularly interesting, however, that I stumbled upon this blog through Google's, a key competitor with Ask.com. Google's blog is hosted on Blogger.com, and we have seen in class, there's a list of other blogs that are read on the side of the blogger page entitled "what we're reading." Also on that list is Yahoo's search blog and MSN's search blog, which make me think it's they're own way of keeping up with the Jones'... all their information is there to see (except for trade secrests, of course), so they're all essentially doing the same thing. In terms of competition and who gets more business, because of these blogs, one would think that they're pretty much equal...