Depending on how you look at it, Jim Lanzone's task when he gets out of bed each morning is either near impossible or a fantastic challenge.

His main rival, Google, enjoys a market share of 79 per cent – about 35 times greater than his. Of the two companies that stand between him and Google, one is the largest technology company in the world, and the other one of the most valuable brands on the internet.

The man who "believes passionately" in what he calls his alternative search engine, could, quite reasonably, want to stick his head in a long, white box.

But that wouldn't be the Silicon Valley way. Instead, asked what it's like taking on the most formidable website on the planet, he breaks into the grin for which West Coast entrepreneurs are famed, and says: "I think it's tasty."

Mr Lanzone's company, lest it isn't clear, is Ask.com: formerly Ask Jeeves, bought by IAC, the media company, for $1.8 billion in August 2005, and now responsible for approximately 2.3 per cent of all search conducted in the UK, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

In the past three months, it has run an aggressive – and expensive – ad campaign aimed at painting Google as a Big Brother-ish bully that stifles web users' choice of information.

You may have noticed a ravamped version of its search service, launched in June, called 3D, which integrates video and other content into the main page of search results. Then again, you may not: awareness of Ask's offering is still pretty low. (It was only in the first half of this year, that its share of the UK search market inched past 2 per cent.)

So, for the newcomers, what is Ask about? "If you look back over the last 15 years, search hasn't changed a great deal," Mr Lanzone says over a coffee on the Strand, in London. "It's still a page with ten links on it and some ads; this despite the fact that the content available on the internet has evolved, bringing with it a need for an interface that shows more of that content."

In particular, he says, people aren't happy with the service they're getting from their current engine. "The average search takes 11 minutes, and needs at least four queries; there's a large gap between what people want and what providers give them – from relevance, to speed, and ease of use."

Ask's solution to this perceived problem is undoubtedly a compelling proposition.

Times Online yesterday compared a search for 'Foot and Mouth' on both Google and Ask. Both contained links to the Institute for Animal Health, Defra and several news sites, the only differences coming at the bottom of the list. (If either slipped up, it was Google, which offered, as its tenth link, the site for the Mouth and Foot Painting Artists, a "self-help co-operative." Ask, meanwhile, plumped for Pighealth.com – a website given over to news of swine.)

Ask's uniqueness is more evident, however, in the layout.