Ask.com, the search engine once known as Ask Jeeves in the early days of the World Wide Web, officially shut down on May 1st.
“After 25 years of answering the world’s questions, Ask.com officially closed on May 1, 2026,” the company announced in a statement on the website.
“We are deeply grateful to the brilliant engineers, designers, and teams who built and supported Ask over the decades. And to you—the millions of users who turned to us for answers in a rapidly changing world,” it added.
“Thank you for your endless curiosity, your loyalty, and your trust”.
The statement closes out with a nod to the website’s former mascot: “Jeeves’ spirit endures”.
ChatGPT in 1997?
Ask Jeeves, originally launched in 1997, was envisioned as a natural language question-and-answer service, akin to what AI chat bots like ChatGPT and Claude can achieve today.
Google’s search engine launched just a year later, and quickly out-competed for market share.
The website’s mascot, Jeeves, was named and modelled after the valet of Bertie Wooster, a character in P. G. Wodehouse’s early 20th century novels.
The Jeeves branding was dropped in 2006, becoming instead Ask.com.
Afterwards, Google’s dominant position pushed Ask.com into relative obscurity, with many surfers of the net even unaware of the rebrand.
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Nostalgia for the Web
The official demise of Ask Jeeves has been met with an outpouring of nostalgia for both the brand and the early days of the web.
“I remember when Google first launched my mom would always debate between using Ask Jeeves or the new Google,” says one Reddit user.
“The internet was so much more innocent back then filled by information and curiosity,” they add.
Many users state they were unaware Ask was still around.
“Didn’t know they were still around,” says one user on X.
“Wow. Totally forgot about this. This used to be the best website for questions back in the early 2000s,” another user adds.
Some comments draw a parallel between Ask Jeeve’s natural language engine and modern-day Large-Language Models (LLM) which power AI chatbots, and question why the company did not pivot to AI.
“It’s kind of funny that the instant we actually have the technology for an AI butler that answers all your questions we get rid of Jeeves,” questions one Reddit user.
“It’s kind of insane that they didn’t pivot into AI themselves,” asks another user.
That question will have to remain unanswered, as we can no longer simply ask Jeeves.
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