Ask.com, a Breath of Fresh Air

While Google introduces more half-baked concepts like Google Finance and lame interface ideas for Google Search, Ask.com revamps its search engine and shows Google a few new tricks. According to Walt Mosberg's latest Personal Tech article, Ask.com offers its users 'Binoculars' that allows you to preview the contents of a search result without leaving the search page. Another new feature enables the user to refine their search with a 'Zoom' option -- both are neat time saving features. These are the kind of ideas I was alluding to in my blog post, 'Google Go-Go Gone'.