Ask.com Drops the Axe on 130 Engineering Jobs

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The Wall St. Journal reports 130 engineering jobs were eliminated at Ask.com Tuesday as part of a scaling back of its search-engine business by parent company IAC/InterActiveCorp.

According to the report, pink slips were served at Ask.com’s offices in Edison, N.J. and Hangzhou, China. However, some employees at the Edison facility were invited to move to the company’s headquarters in Oakland, Calif. as part of a consolidation.

The Journal reports the company’s top man, Barry Diller, who paid a cool $1.85 billion for the company in 2005, no longer wants to compete with Google, Microsoft and others in the search engine business. Instead, the company plans to improve its toolbar business and online question and answer service.