Ask.com, former home of search butler Jeeves, closes just as conversational search comes back

In the mid-1990s, search engine designers settled on the user interface that dominates to this day: a text box into which users enter text, and a resulting list of websites. Then came Garrett Gruener, David Warthen, and Gary Chevsky, who together devised Ask Jeeves – a search engine that offered the chance to ask natural …

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Jeeves wasn't a Butler

He was a valet (arguments about how to pronounce it below)

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: Jeeves wasn't a Butler

A valet or as PGW wrote and I would prefer "a gentleman's gentleman."

Very much the brains of the Bertie Wooster firm.

[captain veg]

Re: Jeeves wasn't a Butler

Al Green was my valet.

-A.

[trevorde]

I asked Grok to be Jeeves and here's what happened*

Raffles the Gentleman Thug (from Viz) -->

* may not have actually happened

[frankvw]

Re: I asked Grok to be Jeeves and here's what happened*

Oh great. Now we've got a bunch of role playing AIs. Just what the world needed right now.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Re: I asked Grok to be Jeeves and here's what happened*

Well, it's a laff, innit? May as well fool around with the damned things.

And I bet if it takes off, Google will throw themselves into conniptions trying to figure out why suddenly they're Jeeves.

[Anonymous Coward]

A little something for the weekend sir?

I shall turn safe search off.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: A little something for the weekend sir?

We've not been getting any of it now going on for 4 years!

https://www.theregister.com/Author/Alistair-Dabbs

since he up sticks and went over to substack...

https://autosaveisforwimps.substack.com/about

[AMBxx]

Is Dogpile the last of the early search?

Is it just Dogpile that's left of the minor search engines from the late 90s?

[SuperGeek]

Re: Is Dogpile the last of the early search?

I never really liked the name, it makes me think of dogsh*t. Indeed that is one of the meanings, as well as "a disorderly heap of people formed around one person"

Oh, dogeggs! ;)

[Uncle Slacky]

Re: Is Dogpile the last of the early search?

There are still a few around, though no doubt under new ownership since the old days:

https://www.hotbot.com/

https://www.lycos.com/

https://www.webcrawler.com/

https://www.excite.com/

https://www.metacrawler.com/

(all listed here, with some defunct ones: https://www.oldest.org/technology/oldest-internet-search-engines)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is Dogpile the last of the early search?

The sad irony of half of those sites requesting content from/via Google Tag Mangler… How they have fallen indeed…

(I wonder what actually powers the back-ends of all of those sites these days; some certainly seem to have been reinvented ("AI search", ugh!) and some of the rest appear (from the legalese lines) to have been acquired by certain less reputable holding companies over the years…)

[Mr Dogshit]

Didn't know it still existed.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the late 1990s, Yahoo! was the big name when it came to finding stuff on the web. That was still based on categorising websites by hand even when I worked there in 98-99. The people who did the categorisation where called "surfers", and were only just being phased out in favour of automated web crawlers and what is essentially a full text search engine by the time I left the company.

[jpennycook]

old man

I remember Lycos after it had stopped crawling, because who needed more than 2000000 web pages in an index. I remember when Yahoo was someone's university project (I seem to remember the host was called akebono but I could be wrong). I remember when Excite was a "concept engine". Infoseek was good, as you could set it to email you when new pages met your requirements. I still remember when Amazon's recommendations were relevant and trustworthy, and when Google wasn't evil. I also remember when domain names were back-to-front, and BEGAN with "uk"

[A. Coatsworth]

Re: old man

Cue Roy Batty's famous last words...

[ItsAllGonePeteTong]

Re: old man

I remember when domains were the other way around back on my Amiga connected to Demon in about 1993. I think it may have been because of some early BBS systems used that layout years earlier and some sites adopted it as they transitioned to the global Internet. I have no screenshots so can't prove it. I tell people about this today and they simply don't believe me. I have a feeling a lot of things changed around 1994 and I moved to PC and found Netscape Navigator which was doing things like a modern browser. And that was that. Thanks for taking me down memory lane again!

[Space Beaver]

Re: old man

That sounds very much like JANET and the way it ordered domains:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET_NRS

[frankvw]

Re: old man

I remember when Fidonet introduced file search and file request processing via echomail in the late 1980s. I remember sharing FTP directory listings via Usenet. I remember trickle servers to request and receive files via email.

Someone here will be able to legitimately top that, and I can't wait to see how. (Sneakernet file transfers or a 747 full of tapes don't count.)

[Pete Sdev]

Re: old man

One day all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

[Boothy]

Re: old man

I also had an Amiga connected via Demon back then.

I used to frequent #DISA back in those days on IRC. (Demon IP Support Amiga), set up to mirror demons news group of the same name, to provide live support for Amiga users, but ended up become a nice little community of mostly Amiga owners, but also just people who liked to hang out and chat. I used to provide assistance in setting up the TCP/IP stack on the Amiga back then.

Even had a few IRL meetups, one of which involved a couple of women from the USA saying they'd come to visit. Much dubiousness later, and they actually turned up! They were on a European trip for a few weeks, and rented a cottage close to where we were having the meet up. So two USA women, meeting up with half a dozen guys from the UK they'd never seen or met, only talked to over IRC!

Innocent times!

[Thereneverwasaplot]

Re: old man

Google Alerts used to do that quite well. Unfortunately it's now got all the same sponsored bs as the search engine

[Erix]

Re: old man

I remember ... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion ... C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate

[nobody who matters]

I tried Ask Jeeves sometimes 20+ years ago, but soon stopped bothering because, frankly, it seemed to be pretty crap.

Nowadays, Google seems to be pretty crap too.

[frankvw]

Which proves once again that Sturgeon's Law is entirely correct.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have fond memories of ask.com

From what I remember of ask.com was their toolbar getting added from being bundled with dodgy software and people would end up with 5 or 6 toolbars or search engines on their browser.

[Thereneverwasaplot]

Re: I don't have fond memories of ask.com

The hours I have spent over the years clearing that crud out for people I don't want to count!

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon someone will come up with disruptive new idea to offer simple categorised, catalogued list of approved websites requiring tiny amount of compute to interogate

[anthonyhegedus]

FTFY

Like a real-life gentleman's gentleman, Jeeves would promptly and politely fetch whatever his master desired – in this case, a list of websites. several scammy websites and dodgy ads.