Ask.com is starting to grow on me. The alternative search engine -- as in "alternative to Google" -- has been generating a small buzz for some time, and a recent publicity push put its name in front of TV viewers who probably thought of it as a new search tool. But in reality, this is the old Ask Jeeves with a brand new face, and a host of significant features that make it a genuine contender.

The Jeeves logo is gone and the site now sports the cleanest interface in the business. To me, the killer feature is the ability to preview a site found on the results page by hovering your mouse over a small binoculars icon. It's remarkable how many pages immediately disqualify themselves through this thumbnail preview; I find I get through a page of search results much faster than before because I don't need to load pages unnecessarily just to check them.

But Ask.com also delivers a set of other features that make searching more intuitive. To the right of the results is a column that provides choices for narrowing or expanding your search.

When I ran a search on Tahiti recently, this "zoom" feature set up intelligent choices, offering links to maps, travel, food, culture and history, along with ways to expand the search throughout French Polynesia. The result is to organize your findings and make it easier for you to navigate through them, another welcome timesaver.

It's also helpful that Ask.com provides a box at the top of the results page that offers consolidated information about your query. The box might contain an encyclopedia article, an official site, a biography or the latest news on the topic, but it's usually relevant. And so are the page results themselves, to the point that I find myself searching Ask.com as often as Google these days, and deferring to Ask when it comes to its excellent search engine for images.

But here's what I like best. At the top of the results page is a link to something called "My Stuff," which is a page where you can save search results. You can set up a free account to store data and images online, or upload your own Web bookmarks.

The ability to search and then file information within the same service is a boon to students that, when coupled with the other smart tools Ask.com offers, gives me no hesitation in recommending it for researchers.

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Meanwhile, Google continues to grow, and between storing documents online, managing news feeds, building blogs and all its other operations, the question is: What will Google do next?

One aspect of Google that has changed the parameters of conventional business is AdSense, the advertising service that lets Web publishers leverage Google's mighty computer operation to generate profit.

You've seen the boxy Google ads -- often garishly unmatched to a page's prevailing color scheme -- on countless Web logs and other sites. AdSense scans what's on a Web page and then delivers advertising that's more or less tuned to what it finds there.

I say more or less because AdSense is far from perfect. I run a Web log on space exploration, and although my testing has produced ads on things such as telescopes and star maps, I also get occasional ads for "4-star hotels" or "Hollywood starlets." It amazes me that an outfit that prides itself on search relevance is unable to distinguish between a celestial star and a Hollywood one.

Another amazement: An article I wrote on star temperatures produced an ad for a Web service called RUHot, offering to rate my various charms.

But many readers don't care, and AdSense is a money-making tool for small Web publishers. Now Google is leveraging that business by going into the newspaper market, setting up a service to place print ads in papers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as several owned by The McClatchy Co., including The News & Observer. The program should appeal to small businesses, especially people trying to reach broader markets thatlocal papers can't service well. Some think it will lower advertising costs in the print media.

The plan is to test the ads in 50 major newspapers. Almost $50 billion a year goes into newspaper advertising, a market Google hopes to tap by helping newspapers fill ad space that might otherwise go empty. A win-win situation? Perhaps, but at the very least we can say that the boundary between digital news and traditional media has just gotten a bit fuzzier. Now in testing, the system will be introduced for real next year, and we'll see how well the revenue model works.