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Ask.com
Ask.com, division of InterActive Corp.
Image:AskLogoNew07.PNG
Type Search Engine
Founded 1996
Headquarters Oakland, California, USA
Key people Garrett Gruener, David Warthen, Founders.
Jim Lanzone, current CEO
Industry Internet
Revenue Unknown
Website Ask.com
Ask.com, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, is an Internet search engine. It is
also the company name of the division of IAC Search & Media, founded in 1996
by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California. The original
software was implemented by Gary Chevsky from his own design. The RODA
Group, a venture capital firm, was an early investor.
Ask.com owns a variety of sites including country-specific sites for UK,
Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, and Spain along with Ask For Kids,
Teoma (now defunct), Excite, MyWay.com, iWon.com, Bloglines and several
others. The combined traffic to these web sites places Ask.com in the top
ten parent web companies in the US, as rated by both comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings
in September 2004. As of June 5, 2007 the site relaunched with a new, more
simplistic look.[1]
Ask Jeeves history
Ask.com was originally known as Ask Jeeves, where "Jeeves" is the name of
the "gentleman's gentleman", or valet (illustrated by Marcos Sorenson),
fetching answers to any question asked. The character was based on Jeeves,
Bertie Wooster's fictional valet from the works of P. G. Wodehouse. The
original idea behind Ask Jeeves was to allow users to get answers to
questions posed in everyday, natural language. As time wore on and keyword
search engines such as Google rose to prominence, indexing more webpages,
Ask Jeeves suffered a loss of many of its users. The technology was reworked
to allow keyword searches as well, but by this time Ask Jeeves had dropped
below Google, MSN, and Yahoo! in the size of their userbase. However,
because Ask.com was slow to index some new webpages, Ask.com did not suffer
the onslaught of computer-generated linkspam results that initially flooded
Google Search, MSN Search, and Yahoo! Search and buried significant webpages
that Ask Jeeves (or Ask.com) could still find.
Evolution of Jeeves
Jeeves' retirement
On September 23, 2005 the company announced plans to phase out the
character,[2] and on 27 February 2006 Jeeves was disassociated with Ask.com.
A page on the site was created, called "Where's Jeeves?", in which the
makers of Ask for Kids announced that Jeeves was retiring.[3]
They then listed several activities Jeeves would partake in during his
retirement years, such as Tropical Living:
“ Jeeves has always fancied owning an island! Whether he's hanging around in
his own restaurant, or kicking back on a beach chair, he'll always feel
relaxed & rewarded. ”
The other activities listed were: Growing Grapes, World Cruises, Monkeying
Around, and Space Exploration.
An Ask.com advertisement can be found on various internet sites and
billboards claiming that "The Algorithm Killed Jeeves".
“ After ten years of dutifully helping kids answer questions for their
homework, learn more about their world, or to just be able help them answer
the eternal "Why?" Jeeves has decided that his work here is done. Don't
worry. Our site will still be here to help you with all of your homework and
searches. Jeeves is just taking this opportunity to hang up his butler suit
and retire, but he is taking a few days rest before he goes. ”
Technology and concepts
The original idea behind Ask.com was the ability to answer questions posed
in natural language. Ask.com was the first commercial question-answering
search engine for the World Wide Web. It supports a variety of user queries
in plain English (natural language), as well as traditional keyword
searching and strives to be more intuitive and user-friendly than other
search engines. In other words, when you ask a question, it searches for the
answer. Ask Jeeves sold the same technology used on the ask.com site to
corporations including Dell, Toshiba, and E*Trade. That part of the business
was sold to Kanisa (now Knova/Consona) in 2002.
Ask.com-owned Teoma search technology uses subject-specific link popularity
to compute "authoritativeness" of a search result. The Teoma technology also
incorporates patented click popularity techniques, originally from the
DirectHit search engine, which Ask Jeeves acquired in 2000. On 26 February
2006 Teoma was rebranded and redirected to Ask.com.[4]
The ExpertRank algorithm provides search results ordered through attempting
to identify authoritative websites. As well as link popularity,
subject-specific popularity is also considered. Topics (identified as
"clusters") are identified using experts on those topics and this
information is used to help improve the ordering of returned websites during
searches.
Corporate details
Ask.com stock traded on NASDAQ stock exchange from July 1999 to July 2005,
under the ticker symbol ASKJ. At the time of the IPO in 1999, ASKJ had the
3rd best first-day performance in history. In 2003, it was the 51st best
performing stock out of 3229 companies on the NASDAQ. The price of Ask.com
stock soared more than 500% throughout the course of the year. In July 2005,
ASKJ ticker was retired upon the closing of the acquisition by IAC/InterActiveCorp.
IAC/InterActiveCorp trades on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol IACI. The IAC/InterActiveCorp
deal was announced in March 2005 valuing ASKJ at $1.85 billion. IAC/InterActiveCorp
is a media holding company founded and run by Barry Diller.
Information-revolution.org campaign
In early 2007 a number of advertisements appeared on London Underground
trains warning commuters that 75% of all the information on the web flowed
through one site (implied to be Google), with a URL for
www.information-revolution.org. Links also appeared on the homepage of
Ask.com and in videos on YouTube. Both the adverts and website were designed
in shades of red, white and black associated with anarchist movements. The
website was intended to foster debate about the use of search engines, with
messages such as "One source isn’t choice". However, when web users found
out that the site was actually a form of astroturfing by the marketing
company Profero, the blogging area became overwhelmed with negative messages
berating Ask.com for their cynical attempt at marketing. Several users
noticed the fact that for a short period, doing a search on Ask for "google"
would return the information-revolution site as the first result. [5]
Television advertising
Apostolos Gerasoulis has starred in four television advertisements recently
released, expounding the virtues of Ask.com's usefulness for information
relevance.[6]
References
1. ^ Major Relaunch For Ask: Ask3D, Techcrunch, 2007-06-04. Retrieved on
June 5, 2007
2. ^ "Ask Jeeves decides to axe Jeeves", BBC News, 2005-09-23. Retrieved on
2005-09-23.
3. ^ Where's Jeeves?. AskForKids.com. Retrieved on 2007-01-06.
4. ^ Another Brand Retirement of Note: Teoma. Ask.com Blog (2006-02-26).
Retrieved on 2006-02-27.
5. ^ Ask’s Anti-Google Campaign. outer-court.com (2007-03-18). Retrieved on
2007-03-28.
6. ^ About Ask.com: TV Spots. Retrieved on 2007-04-25.
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