Ask Jeeves just closed its doors after 29 years, and no one noticed

In the tech industry, sometimes you have a weird moment where you learn that a service is down, and your first reaction is “Wait, was that still a thing?” For example, this time last year we learned that AOL was finally shutting down its dial-up service, and I wince to think of what it would be like to watch a modern YouTube video with a 56k modem.

The big shock this year is that, apparently, the Ask.com search engine was still working just a few days ago. The company quietly announced that Ask Jeeves was going away, and it only took us a very long time to find out because no one was visiting it anymore.

Ask Jeeves has finally done its final search

He answered questions for over 25 years

On the Ask.com website, IAC Inc said it was exiting the search business, which means ending Ask Jeeves. If you’re too young to remember Ask Jeeves (which is a bit scary, actually), Ask Jeeves came out in 1997 and tried to achieve what LLMs do today. Its main appeal was that you didn’t use search terms or keywords, but asked questions in plain English to a cartoon butler named Jeeves.

Unfortunately, Ask Jeeves failed to take on the young Google of the time, and I distinctly remember Google’s results being better than Ask Jeeves. In response to Google, Ask Jeeves was renamed “Ask” in 2006.

Today the website is officially closed:

Every great search must come to an end.

As IAC continues to focus, we have made the decision to discontinue our search operations, which include Ask.com. After 25 years of answering the world’s questions, Ask.com officially closed its doors on May 1, 2026.

This 25-year-old claim is a bit odd, considering he was a month away from turning 29; Still, it’s sad to see a legend from the early days of the Internet disappear, even if we just thought she was already gone a decade ago.