There was a time when surfing the Internet involved a lot of searching. Each search was a small expedition and each web page seemed to open a different door to a world that was still growing at full speed. Back then, ask.com was one of those places we went to as naturally as we open a search engine on any device today. The site promised something simple and at the same time almost magical at that moment: ask a question and get an answer.
This spirit was reflected in its original title, AskJeeves.comas well as in the picture that accompanied it. Jeeves, the fictional butler from the novels of PG Wodehousebecame the perfect guide for a service that sought to answer questions formulated in natural language. While other search engines forced you to play with keywords, AskJeeves offered something closer to a conversation. User asked, Jeeves answered. It was a simple idea, but very representative of that early stage of the Internet, where each service was trying to find its own individuality.
This chapter in the history of the Internet has come to an end. Ask.com finally shut down on May 1stcapping nearly three decades of Internet activity. Anyone who visits its home page today will find a farewell message in which the company confirms the closing of the search service and thanks the users who accompanied him all these years. The statement explains that the decision is part of a strategic redefinition of its parent company InterActiveCorp (IAC), which has decided to end this business after more than two decades of answering questions from users from around the world.
Business trip It started in 1997 on a very different internet than today. It was a time when numerous search engines coexisted and tried to organize the growing chaos of the Internet. One was AskJeeves, with a differentiated proposition based on complete questions rather than simple strings of words. Over the years, the service evolved and eventually simplified its name until it became Ask.com, while the dynamics of the digital ecosystem itself also changed. In 2005, the company was acquired by InterActiveCorp, which has maintained control of the project ever since.
however, The landscape of Internet search has changed radically during the 2000s.. The growth of Google and the constant improvement of its algorithms has resulted in the concentration of most of the world’s traffic on fewer and fewer platforms. Many search engines that were part of the digital landscape in the early years of the Internet have lost relevance or transformed their business models. Ask.com has managed to remain a cognitive service in this ecosystem for a long time, but over the years its role has been increasingly reduced.
A farewell message posted on his homepage captures the tone of this closing well. In it, the company thanks the work of the teams involved in the development of the service, as well as the loyalty of those who have used it for decades. “Thank you to the millions of users who have come to us in search of answers in an ever-changing world, for your endless curiosity, loyalty and trust,” the statement said. The text also ends with a link full of symbolism: “The spirit of Jeeves endures,” a nod to the origins of the project and the character who accompanied the search engine in its early years.
The shutdown of Ask.com may not change everyday life on the Internet as we know it today, in fact, many probably barely remember it, and many others have no idea. In fact, the last time the service was in the news, it wasn’t good news. Still, for those of us who lived through those early years of the Internet, his farewell remains something of a shared memory. Because every time one of those old internet names from the late 90s goes away, so does a small fragment of the time comes out, when there were still some adventures in the network.
