With the baseball season getting underway, I can’t resist the metaphor. Unfortunately, it’s actually pretty inaccurate. It doesn’t really seem like Ask.com is getting anything out of it.

The news today is that Steve Berkowitz of Ask.com is on his way to Microsoft, where he will head up the MSN online services. He’ll be responsible for marketing, sales and business development for MSN and for Windows Live – although he will not be taking on product development.

Any luck, his first step will be start a consolidation of Windows search brands – I know that the Windows Live / MSN Search has me thoroughly confused! Why does Microsoft need two search portals?

Regardless, this kind of shake-up at both Ask.com and at MSN should make for some interesting changes to come.