OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT ON ALTAVISTA VS ASKJEEVES Assignment

OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT ON ALTAVISTA VS ASKJEEVES - Assignment Example When so many websites have come and gone without leaving a trail of their disappearance, AltaVista and Ask have quite successfully held on to the tide so far, with plans for further growth in the near future. The operations system of an organization is the part that produces the organization's products - in case of manufacturing organisations and that polishes the service operations making them more user friendly - in case of service oriented organizations. In fact operations management has its origins in the study of 'production' or 'manufacturing management'. In some organizations the product is a physical (tangible) good like a television, computer system, furniture item etc. while in others, the 'product' is a service like health care, insurance, telephone services, internet searches, tourist services etc. What is common in both these types of operations is the 'conversion process.' Resources are used by the system in the 'input' chain, which gets converted into valuable 'outputs' after passing through this conversions process. This is where the role of operations management comes into picture. ... e essence of operations management comes into play; it calls for making rational decisions in difficult circumstances with limited, imperfect information. Operations management can therefore be defined as1 'the design, operation and improvement of the internal and external systems, resources and technologies that create and deliver the firm's primary product and service combinations' Problem Statement In this study we'll be trying to study the operational strategies of AltaVista and Ask Jeeves. During the course of study, we'll be taking a look at how both these companies have evolved over the years. Both these search engines have had differing amounts of successes during the course of their journey. We'll try to compare some of operational aspects of these companies and comment on their success or failures. Analysis Internet has indeed established itself as a potent source of information. There are innumerable numbers of sources of information, which tend to prove detrimental for the information seeker. As per the latest available figures, more than a billion users have been using the internet worldwide. But to take the desired piece of information out of the huge information databank, search engine prove very useful. Search engines appeared on the scene during the early 90s. Since then there have been many evolutionary changes in the search engine technologies. The market is led by the likes of Google and Yahoo. This study is carried out to analyze the market position of AltaVista vis--vis Ask (formerly known as Ask Jeeves). The search engines started to provide a list of web sites where we were supposed to find responses to our search terms. The websites appearing in response may have answer to our query or might prove to be irrelevant. Search engines like Ask