The homepage now reads, “As IAC continues to expand its focus, we have decided to wind down our search business, which includes Ask.com. After 25 years of answering the world’s questions, Ask.com officially closes on May 1, 2026.”
The friend is back! But you can connect only with offline friends.
Ask Jeeves was launched in 1997 by Berkeley-based duo Garrett Gruener and David Worthen, a year before Google’s now-dominant search engine was unveiled to the public. At the time, Ask Jeeves’ natural language processing, combined with its personality-filled voice and branding, made it the go-to web search and answer engine for early Internet adopters. The website’s butler mascot, Jeeves, modeled after the PG Wodehouse character, made an appearance in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, holding its own against other iconic corporate logos of the early 2000s.
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“Can One Man Have All the Answers?” If he has access to the entire Internet, of course.
But while many people still refer to the site by its 1990s name, Ask.com hasn’t been “Ask Jeeves” for nearly 20 years, with the brand dropping the latter term and its valet logo in 2006. This change came after a change in ownership, when the brand was transferred to American holding company IAC. In 2009, Ask.com was named the official search engine of NASCAR.
“We are deeply grateful to the talented engineers, designers, and teams who built and supported Ask for 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,” Ask.com reads. “Jeeves’ spirit endures.”
Amid a tremendous shift toward generic AI-powered search engines and the reestablishment of AI agents as the future of web browsing, the loss of Ask.com feels like the real end of the early dot-com era. So long Jeeves, hello AI.
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