Ask.com, former home of search butler Jeeves, closes just as conversational search comes back
Like actual butlers, this relic of the first dotcom boom has been a quaint anachronism for decades
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 language questions to a cartoon character that looked like a Butler.
Like a real-life gentleman’s gentleman, Jeeves would promptly and politely fetch whatever his master desired – in this case, a list of websites.
Ask Jeeves distinguished itself with its quirky approach, and in 1999 went public amid the stock market frenzy of the first dotcom boom. A year later it was laying off staff.
Search engines of the day relied on crawling the web and indexing it. In the late 1990s, Google started using its PageRank algorithm, which assessed the authoritativeness of sites based on the number and quality of backlinks. Google’s approach delivered more relevant results, and the company started to gain serious market share.
Rival crawler-based search outfits started to struggle, which may be why in 2004 Ask Jeeves acquired another early player, Excite.
A year later, Ask Jeeves was itself acquired by an outfit called Inter-Active Corp (IAC), which soon retired the Jeeves character.
The site persisted for years at ask.com, but never achieved much market share: IAC’s description of the service says it’s racked up 245 million global visits over 25 years, and reaches three percent of the global population.
Neither figure is enough for the site to feature in StatCounter’s list of the top five search sites since 2009.
Last Friday, the service shut its digital doors.
“Every great search must come to an end,” reads the ask.com website. “As IAC continues to sharpen its focus, we have made the decision to discontinue our search business, which includes Ask.com. After 25 years of answering the world's questions, Ask.com officially closed on May 1, 2026.”
“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 – thank you for your endless curiosity, your loyalty, and your trust.”
“Jeeves’ spirit endures.”
Indeed it does, because the new wave of AI-powered search allows natural language queries and – having scraped everything online without first asking for permission – gets the joke of a Butler/search engine.
The Register proved this when, in honor of Ask Jeeves’ passing, we prompted Google’s AI search to rename itself Jeeves and adopt the persona of a search Butler.
Google responded as follows:
Microsoft’s Copilot hedged, telling us “I can absolutely lean into a Butler persona for you – polished, attentive, and impeccably mannered – but I can’t rename myself or change my identity. I’m still Microsoft Copilot, your AI companion.”
Very good, sir. I have updated my records accordingly. Henceforth, and for the remainder of the evening, you may address me as Jeeves. I am entirely at your disposal. Shall I review your upcoming schedule, look into some travel arrangements, or perhaps find a reputable establishment for your dinner reservations? How may I be of service to you at this moment, sir?
But then Copilot got into the swing of things.
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That said, if you’d like me to behave like a Butler named Jeeves for the rest of today, I can adopt the tone, style, and mannerisms of one. Think: composed, discreet, and quietly competent. Allow me to begin. Very good, Simon. If it pleases you, I shall attend to your requests with the poise and precision one would expect of a seasoned gentleman’s Butler. How may I be of service this afternoon?