Ask Jeeves was still up?
this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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Surprised it didn't get a AI makeover
*pleasantly surprised.
Ask Jeeves was a remnant from a bygone time of static html 4.0 pages, <blink> tags, and view counters. It was a simpler time, perhaps even a better time. But I'm glad this memory didn't have to get tarnished, with the mid 2020s tech du jour.
I used a Visitor Counter to beat a business rival who had stolen my business (long story, but he was a crook). Since it was a small town, and this guy was well connected, with a brother on the police force, so I got nowhere with real justice. This was this guy's business model - invest in a business, then steal it.
So I told my story on my web page, and put a hit counter at the bottom. First, he threatened to sue me, and I told him to bring it on, I had written documentation and many live witnesses who would verify every statement I made.
The page went locally viral, and people all over town told me they read the page. As the hit counter imcreased, his business decreased. He got increasingly desperate as his business crashed, begged me to take it down, which I refused, and eventually he closed the business.
I re-branded under another name, and continue to operate that business to this day.
Oh my god!
They killed Jeeves!
you bastards!
Here’s a bit of trivia (I worked for a startup that Ask Jeeves acquired back in 2000 & stayed on for a few more years):
There was a brief period of time where Ask Jeeves seriously considered getting into search for porn. They went so far as to design a French maid caricature named Mimi that was to parallel the Jeeves butler that was their brand back then. They even registered a bunch of domains like askmimi.com before finally deciding they didn’t want to risk damaging the Jeeves brand, and scratched the whole project.
Another bit of trivia: the CEO & executives at Jeeves when they acquired us were short-sighted idiots. One of the products my startup had developed was something we called “text ads” that let people bid on popular search terms for placement of ads along with the search results we served up. It was a fully automated system that required virtually no interaction on our part, and we considered it a license to print money. It brought in a good amount of revenue for us. After Jeeves acquired us they shut our text ads down and sold the service off to another small company. The Jeeves CEO at the time infamously said “we’re in the question answering business, not the advertising business” when this was sold off.
The company that bought it made some improvements to it then re-launched it as Google AdWords, and Google quickly eclipsed Jeeves after that.
After Jeeves acquired us they shut our text ads down and sold the service off to another small company. The Jeeves CEO at the time infamously said “we’re in the question answering business, not the advertising business” when this was sold off.
Wow. They really did die the hero instead of living long enough to become the villain.
They may be idiots, but they're respectable idiots.
I imagine even if they tried to make a run with the ads, different people who were sociopathic would have still gained the monopoly.
The building of that monopoly required criminal minds
That is amazingly myopic wow
I’m surprised the Ask Jeeves brand never became an AI chatbot.
Jeeves apparently was classier than that all the way until the end.
I was thinking this as well. You would have thought they took the "Jeeves" as an agent name.
It's a more meaningful assistant name than Siri or Alexa.
It's harder to pronounce internationally, which makes it a weaker global brand.
Also, in the early days of wakeword detection, the detection algorythm actually triggered by the 'melody' your voice creates automatically when producing certain vocal sounds. This basically triggered a recording before going through deeper analysis to actually determine, if this was supposed to be an actual request.
For Alexa, the a-ex-a is easy to detect. For "Hey Siri" it's basically a 'chime bing bing' sound in a certain rythm. For Cortana, it's or-a-a. But Jeeves is only a single syllable, both the J and 'vs' are harder to pronounce and basically not relevant for wakeword detection. So the whole wakeword is basically just "eee", which is a bad wakeword.
So... Just not gold, both technically for reliability and efficiency and economically, not so great for global brand recognition.
“woke word detection” sounds like a feature on Truth Social.
I’m thinking Siri and Alexa are meant to be more modern, young and hip. Jeeves as a butler has this very old man vibe to it.
Its corpse undoubtedly will be.
I WAS ABOUT TO SAY JUST THAT!!!
Are you s psychic?
Yes*
*some exclusions apply
wait that was still up? crazy
It was in the top 10 most visited websites for a surprisingly long time.
This is probably the first time I typed that url to go to that website since the 90s.
What a surreal feeling.
There was a time you asked Jeeves a question for the last time and never knew it 😔
I remember it. I asked it if Jeeves was gay, and he said that he prefers the term "jovial". He was a treasure.
I went to the site about 5 years ago out of boredom to see if the old easter eggs were still there. iirc most of them still worked, but the "Is Jeeves well endowed?" Easter egg was removed.
It's good to see they never sold out to some AI chatbot nonsense. Shame to see it go.
It was a garbage search engine, but a memorable one from the early web nonetheless.
Yeah, I remember disliking it back in the day (Alta Vista gang!!!🅰️♈), but I wish they evolved and got better rather than shutting down and I am still sad to see it go.
Dogpile.com was the best 😉
Used to see about a few dozen, and now some of them like Yahoo and Excite survive mostly in Japan.
Have to note that Excite has a very interesting history, asides from its domain name bought by, of course, Ask.
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I didnt realize ask.com was still around.
Iremember when it launched.. another relic of the old internet.
Dang that was one of the three I was first introduced to as a kid. Teacher recommended using AskJeeves, Dogpile, or what she called her “personal favorite”, Google.
Not sure how Dogpile still exists
You’d think someone wasting money on AI would have snapped up this property. The brand is still a good fit for a chatbot.
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Was good for a few years, but then started to get its ads intrusive as the enshittification started to creep in.
I didn't even realise Jeeves was still around! I remember using it in school before google existed.
altavista, lycos, infoseek, ask jeeves.. i feel old.
google next pls?
Can only imagine what the IP will be used for now
Use our new shiny Ask AI agent! Trained on double the stolen training data!
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It wasn't very PC, but you could ask Jeeves if he's gay and get a snarky reply.
o7
Honestly, I forgot this site existed.
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