Topix.net's Rich Skrenta said that Google is the environment and not the competition in search; Yahoo, Ask, and Microsoft have been working to define a new environment where the top of the search results delivers what a person wants to know.
-- Sun Tzu advises competing search engines to stay the hell away from Google, Siberian Huskies, political figures bring forth richer responses.
Under CEO Jim Lanzone, Ask has made the tactical decision to place these results atop the sponsored search ads that appear on search result pages. Microsoft and Yahoo both render their quick answers under those boxes.
Yahoo accomplishes the quick answer concept with their a slew of deals, including oneSearch for mobile devices.
A tour of oneSearch on Yahoo's Go site shows how, like Ask's Smart Answers, it will display "instant answers with just one click." The service makes use of Yahoo's extensive repositories of content, and seeing it in action may make one think Yahoo has a real winner.
They will have to compete with Microsoft in that mobile space, as Steve Ballmer and company very much want to have the handset environment in the way they own the desktop (and Google owns contextual search.)
Microsoft's Instant Answers seems to have dropped off the Live Search team's radar. A year ago this month, they were touting the addition of about a million facts to that service. It's nowhere near what Yahoo will offer on oneSearch, or what Ask has been doing with Smart Answers.
Other than weather and some sports facts, it's hard to see any evidence that Microsoft is taking the potential of fingertip information seriously. Against Google, they need a differentiator, and a colorful butterfly just isn't enough.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. 
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