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3h ago

IAC Shutters Ask.com, Ending the Ask Jeeves Era

The shutdown underscores a turn toward AI chatbots that answer questions directly.

Former Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz is shown in Emeryville in 2004 with the search engine’s mascot. The internet pioneer, later known as Ask.com, shut down Friday.
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Former ask.com mascot Jeeves, a cartoon butler.
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Overview

  • InterActiveCorp said it discontinued its search business, closing Ask.com on Friday, May 1, in a farewell note on the homepage.
  • The askjeeves.com domain was still reachable on Saturday, but searches only surfaced results from other IAC-owned sites.
  • Ask Jeeves was founded in Berkeley by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in 1996, launched in 1997, was bought by IAC in 2005, and rebranded as Ask.com in 2006.
  • After losing ground to Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s Bing, Ask outsourced its search technology by 2010 and never regained a competitive role.
  • Reporters note that Ask’s natural-language Q&A style and the Jeeves persona foreshadowed today’s AI assistants, which helps explain why the closure feels like a coda to the early web.