Yesterday, Ask laid off 8% of its search related workforce, amounting to about 40 jobs and further the Ask CEO Jim Safka announced that it will now focus exclusively on women. Now in the current updates, it seems that Ask is already serving limited tests of Google powered results in its search results.

This early report of Ask testing Google results was brought out on the Webmasterworld thread. Textex, a WebmasterWorld member since 2003 found Google search results in the Ask.com web search results. At first he said that he is seeing the Google results on Ask. But in his excitement, unfortunately, when he cleared his cookies, so as to reproduce the same results, from there on he no longer was able to see the search results again. Though the reliability of the source could be a question for many, but still the source is trusted by a leading webmaster.

It is important that we should know the real thing that is going on. The 8% of job cuts also includes people like Gary Price, who have been with Ask for two years and has been a key player in ResourceShelf & DocuTicker. With Ask going all women oriented, we can't think of Ask as a serious competitor to Google, Microsoft or Yahoo!

It would be worth an appreciation, if you guys could run some tests between Ask.com and Google to find some match. We all know about the job cuts and the new strategy, which will only be a sort of final curtain call for Ask. So if you guys could find a match, it makes very clear that yes, indeed Ask is actually thinking about dropping the search engine in favor for a lower cost syndication service with Google. And all this hustle-bustle was in no way 'much ado about nothing.' So tell us your find and we will it to everyone else.