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Ask.com has closed

ask.com

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Re: Ask.com has closed

#11

Post by bfsjjdjdfj »

tptacek wrote: post #6
arm32 wrote: post #3

Sad what it had become: https://web.archive.org/web/20260316143530/https://www.ask.c...

Was it ever good?

During those days you were switching between 3-4 different ones to find info. They were maybe good for two weeks where I would use it alot but you always switched around and came back to it.

Re: Ask.com has closed

#12

Post by stingraycharles »

tptacek wrote: post #6
arm32 wrote: post #3

Sad what it had become: https://web.archive.org/web/20260316143530/https://www.ask.c...

Was it ever good?

None of the search engines from that era were really good. AltaVista was perhaps the best, but AskJeeves was up there and people used multiple. AltaVista, AskJeeves, Yahoo, etc. They all had their pros and cons.

Then Google arrived and showed them what a “good” search engine was like.

Re: Ask.com has closed

#13

Post by bandrami »

tptacek wrote: post #6
arm32 wrote: post #3

Sad what it had become: https://web.archive.org/web/20260316143530/https://www.ask.c...

Was it ever good?

Yes. When it came out it was amazing, and it forced the existing search engines to start parsing queries' intents rather than just searching for the words in them.

Re: Ask.com has closed

#15

Post by bandrami »

stingraycharles wrote: post #12
tptacek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it ever good?

None of the search engines from that era were really good. AltaVista was perhaps the best, but AskJeeves was up there and people used multiple. AltaVista, AskJeeves, Yahoo, etc. They all had their pros and cons. Then Google arrived and showed them what a “good” search engine was like.

And at the time it was still an open question whether search engines or curated oracles like Yahoo would be what stuck in the long term.

Re: Ask.com has closed

#19

Post by NitpickLawyer »

fudgeonastick wrote: post #17

https://ask.com/ is my go-to site that I know will be up, but I know will not be in my DNS or browser cache. I use it as my "wait, is my internet really working" check. I hope the domain lives on, and that I don't want to visit it.

Yahoo.com should be your next one :)
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