Ask.com is closed, Google’s old rival bids farewell

Ask.comhas shuttered its search engine business as of May 1, 2026, and IAC has pulled one of the internet’s oldest search brands from the scene. In its farewell message, the company stated that the service 25 years He stated that he was looking for answers to users’ questions throughout. In addition, he thanked the engineers and designers, the teams who worked on the platform, and the millions of users who have sought answers over the years.

Garrett Gruener and David Warthen, Love Jeeves He founded his brand in Berkeley in 1996. In those years, Google was also rising in the early web boom. However, Ask Jeeves brought to the fore the idea of ​​asking questions with natural sentences instead of keywords, and became popular with the masses with its butler mascot named Jeeves.

IAC acquired the company in 2005 and the brand was launched in 2006 Ask.com He started using his name. However, Google Search has become dominant in the search market with its scale, speed and ranking ability. Ask.com, on the other hand, lost its popularity over time and in 2010, it abandoned its own search technology and focused on questions and answers.

A significant portion of young internet users today may have never heard of Ask Jeeves. On the other hand, this closure also shows how the search market has narrowed over the years. Google Search has become the default gateway to the web for many users.

Ask Jeeves legacy lives on in conversational search

Ask.com is no longer running, but the brand’s natural language search idea is still around today artificial intelligencechat bots and conversational search tools. The IAC concluded its closing message with the words, “Jeeves’ spirit lives on.” Thus, Ask.com has maintained its place in the line extending from the early web era to today’s artificial intelligence-powered search experiences.