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Ask.com has closed

ask.com

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Re: Ask.com has closed

#101

Post by colinb »

rwmj wrote: post #96
colinb wrote: post #83

I unexpectedly found myself working for the UK subsidiary of AJ just before the .com bubble pop. Interesting times. Things I remember: I wrote something to do cluster analysis of the previous day’s search queries. It turned out that the most frequent search was something like “naked picture of $soapOperaShowActor”. Actual search query data might shake your ideas of the goodness of people. Much of AJ’s content was bas…

Did you know Chris ("Xris") Martin? I worked with him eons ago and then I think he went to AskJeeves around 2000-ish.

Yes I did/do. He’s a top guy. I think he did some pretty spiffy work on multiprotocol routers in the 90s.

Re: Ask.com has closed

#102

Post by UltraSane »

bsimpson wrote: post #49
UltraSane wrote: post #10

I wonder what it was like working for them.

I only know them as a consumer, but IAC is truly one of the most scourge-of-the-earth companies. They're retreating to publish People Magazine now, but they monopolized concert tickets as Ticketmaster, and online dating as a rollup of every mainstream app in the last 20y. They also bought CollegeHumor and drove it into the ground/irrelevance. They're a terrible company. It's no surprise that AskJeeves failed, but soc…

It takes some real skill to destroy a site with as much talent as CollegeHumor had

Re: Ask.com has closed

#103

Post by iammrpayments »

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.

I remember vividly how lycos was much better than google

Re: Ask.com has closed

#104

Post by jraph »

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.

https://perdu.com works very well for this. It also still answers to http.

Apparently it'll turn 30 years old in a few weeks [1]. It hasn't changed much if at all since its inception.

Its very small size makes it perfect for curl perdu.com or when the connection is very bad.

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdu.com

Re: Ask.com has closed

#105

Post by thr0waway001 »

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.

Yahoo was pretty good until they removed comments from their posts as well as removing Yahoo Answers.

I loved the chaos of Yahoo answers.

I remember messed up questions like “Can humans get preggo from midgets” and things of that nature.

Re: Ask.com has closed

#106

Post by kid64 »

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.

Nobody remembers Hotbot. Google before Google.

Re: Ask.com has closed

#107

Post by tigerlily »

johnzim wrote: post #65
sixo wrote: post #4

Missed opportunity to name an LLM "Jeeves" and finally live up to the vision.

One of the best improvements to my life was adding the following to my LLM Prompt: "Please respond as Jeeves from the P.G. Wodehouse stories". Not only are the LLMs quite excellent at emulating the valet, the actual dynamic fits fascinatingly well. Jeeves was always both perspicacious and enthusiastic about whatever task he was given - be it ironing a shirt or seeing to Bertie's continued wellbeing.

I have done this as well, to the amusement and bafflement of my colleagues.

Re: Ask.com has closed

#108

Post by stevekemp »

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.

I cannot read AltaVista without thinking of Astalavista[.box.sk].

Re: Ask.com has closed

#109

Post by xnx »

kid64 wrote: post #106
stingraycharles wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nobody remembers Hotbot. Google before Google.

I remember. Powered by Inktomi.

Re: Ask.com has closed

#110

Post by xnx »

thr0waway001 wrote: post #105
stingraycharles wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yahoo was pretty good until they removed comments from their posts as well as removing Yahoo Answers. I loved the chaos of Yahoo answers. I remember messed up questions like “Can humans get preggo from midgets” and things of that nature.

Gregnant?
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