Ask.com search engine is sharpening its focus on local results in an attempt to make a bigger splash on the World Wide Web. The new service, named "AskCity" is scheduled to debut Monday, the 4th of December, 2006. With this service the company is trying to finally outshine much-larger rivals Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. and to become a one-stop destination for information about neighborhood events, movies, restaurants and other businesses.

Even though a search channel that digs up phone numbers, addresses and businesses isn't new, the Oakland-based Ask believes it is breaking away from the pack with its City service, which will have more information in a single panel, including richer maps, more lists of nearby attractions and related businesses. To sustain this Ask will provide tools to mark up the maps appearing alongside the written information so a user might be able to pinpoint a designated meeting spot with a friend. Up to 10 maps can be saved at a time for future use.

The service gets information from 20 Web sites outside the InterActiveCorp family, including Fandango for buying movie tickets and OpenTable for making restaurant reservations, and most of Ask's database comes from Citysearch and five other Web sites owned by InterActiveCorp, an e-commerce conglomerate that bought Ask for $2.3 billion last year.

Ask had a two years start before Google was launched in 1998, yet it's never been able to mount a serious challenge to the Internet search leader and as an analyst said this new service is at least as good as Yahoo's and better than Google's, but it doesn't have the power to dethrone Ask's much larger rivals.

written by Robert M.