AskJeeves Returns
January 29, 2010
My recollection is that one of the Ziff Information Access guys was involved with the original AskJeeves.com. I remember learning that the original system used templates to answer questions. When a question came in that required a new template, a human coded one. The approach was interesting but never took off. AskJeeves sold its question answering technology into the corporate market and then exited that business. I don’t know how AskJeeves.com ended up in the Barry Diller empire, but I do have a vague recollection of various repositionings. I read “Ask Jeeves Pushes Q&A Service with New TV Ad Campaign” and thought, “It’s the old AskJeeves.com again. It’s back.” The TV campaign strikes me as old school. The buzz today is about social media marketing. The question-answer game does not appeal to me. I think many people are happy typing 2.3 words into Google and going with the first two or three hits. Close enough for intellectual horseshoes in today’s “we’re too busy to think” world. What is even more fascinating to me is that the butler is back and AskJeeves.com is the only search engine since Northern Light to put bucks into auto racing. The company is trying, but with Google’s market share increasing and Bing.com showing some muscle, I don’t know if AskJeeves.com can clean up.
Stephen E Arnold, January 29, 2010
A freebie. I will report this sad fact to the mayor of Philadelphia who monitors this type of information. I think the mayor asks, “What’s an AskJeeves.com?”
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2 Responses to “AskJeeves Returns”
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I liked the old, original AskJeeves approach. Maybe a better term for it would’ve been “question questioning.”
Seth Grimes,
What what?
Stephen E Arnold, January 29, 2010