With Ask Jeeves, a cult search engine was buried.
Armin Weiler
The Internet is losing a search engine pioneer: Since June 1, 1997, the search engine Ask Jeeves, named after a popular British fictional character, has been answering (among other things) natural language questions. Nine years later, the portal was renamed Ask.com – since then the number of users has fallen year after year. The AI boom did the rest: the service was finally discontinued on May 1, 2026.
“We are deeply grateful to the brilliant developers and designers who have built and supported Ask over decades. We also thank the millions of users who have turned to us for answers in a rapidly changing world for their insatiable curiosity, loyalty and trust. The spirit of Jeeves lives on,” reads a final message on Ask.com.
The Internet Archive said goodbye to the vintage search engine with a nostalgic post on x.com:
