Today I had the good fortune to meet and chat with Gary Price of Ask.com. He gave me the deluxe tour of Ask.com. They are really up to some amazing stuff, and If I’m not mistaken, I heard today that Ask.com has nudged past AOL to be #4 out of the Big 5. There were so many new features, in fact, that I asked Gary how users could learn them all.
One, he gave me a little booklet that they have prepared (it’s right on my desk), and he mentioned their recent TV commercials. Sadly my wife and I have never owned a TV in 23 years, but then they played the ad during the afternoon keynote address, so I got to see it.
My idea is this: bring Jeeves back out of retirement, he was a great character, even if his searches were sometimes disappointing. But this time, make him the “Help” icon. If you want to learn about Ask.com’s newest features – Ask Jeeves! What do you think, Dear Readers?
(Jeeves the Butler is the property of Ask.com, of course).
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December 4th, 2007 at 3:35 am
and clippy, microsoft should bring back clippy
plus implement the stupid dog that help one search on live.com
jeeves is dead, and that’s a good thing. ask should implement their new features in a way, that if people think about them, they might easily find them. don’t bring an annoying avatar into the game again.
December 4th, 2007 at 5:51 am
I hope Jeeves stays on ice forever, I find things like this condescending, he reminds me of Mr Clippy in office.
December 4th, 2007 at 6:14 am
As far as I know most users missed the metaphor of a butler as a helpful person. Most metaphors do not work on the web. Actually, I don’t miss Jeeves.
December 4th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Gary Price is really interesting, I’ve heard him speak. I like Ask.com’s latest design.
As for Jeeves… I suppose I’m indifferent. Mascots are great but not always necessary on the web, especially Web 2.0. I do like what LiveJournal has done with Frank (the goat), but they are not a search engine at all…
December 5th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Me too. I don’t miss Jeeves at all. I think the Ask.com search engine increased their credibility factor ( not to mention cool factor ) tenfold just by dropping the annoying butler.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
I miss Jeeves. Everyone else I know uses Google…but I could always count on Jeeves to find the answer to every question (and I mean EVERY question) I had. Bring him back!