Oakland, California - (Website Hosting Directory) - March 8, 2006 - There is a new entrant for searching the Internet in France, Italy and the Netherlands - Ask.com. The company has introduced beta versions of its search service entitled, Ask.com France, Ask.com Italia and Ask.com Nederland.

According to Ask.com, the beta search sites are available in each respective country at: www.ask.com and can also be accessed directly from any country at fr.ask.com, it.ask.com, nl.ask.com.

Steve Berkowitz, CEO of Ask.com commented on the news, ''The unique search experience at Ask.com has resulted in the largest U.S. percentage growth among the major search engines for 2005, and we look forward to bringing that experience to more European users. With the help of Ask.com, Internet users in France, Italy and the Netherlands will now be able to get what they are looking for faster.''

Following the launch of Ask UK in 2001, Ask Espana in 2005 and Ask Deutschland beta in 2006, the new sites represent Ask.com's commitment to establishing its brand throughout Europe. The company plans to leverage the strength of its popular brand, its advanced technology, one-of-a-kind search tools, and partnerships with leading local content providers to grow share in emerging markets.

Adrian Cox, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Ask.com Europe explained, ''The European search market is growing rapidly and, with differentiated search technology and a single-minded focus on meeting users' search needs, Ask.com is uniquely positioned to take advantage of that growth. We expect that the user adoption of our newly-launched interface, search tools and technologies, coupled with the Ask.com features that our users have come to love, will help Ask.com become a driving force in search across Europe.''

The beta sites utilize Ask.com's proprietary algorithmic search technology, which ranks results based on popularity within topic communities on the web, rather than simply by link popularity. This approach requires additional computations beyond that of other ranking methodologies that simply evaluate the popularity of pages on the web at large.

For further information, please visit: www.ask.com.

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