Ask

Market position

One of the earliest prominent web search engines of the late 1990s and early 2000s, later a smaller competitor to Google, Yahoo! Search and MSN Search. It cited intense competition from larger rivals when it exited in-house search in 2010, and subsequently repositioned as an answer engine and content site.

Natural-language question input rather than keyword-only search, the Jeeves valet brand persona, and strength in answering mathematics, vocabulary and unit-conversion queries; later a hybrid of human-generated Q&A community answers with an archived Q&A database.

Technology

The original platform accepted natural-language questions in addition to traditional keyword search and was known for answer functionality in mathematics, vocabulary and unit conversion, plus encyclopedia-style articles from contributing authors. Ask operated its own web crawler and search algorithm for several years and acquired the Teoma search engine in 2001. In 2010 it ended development of the Ask.com webcrawler and replaced its in-house search service with a third-party-built search engine, combining a human-powered Q&A community with an existing question-and-answer repository and query archive to generate answers. Privacy tooling included AskEraser (2007), which let users opt out of tracking of search queries, IP and cookie values, with data erased after 18 months when not enabled.

Go-to-market

General consumer internet users seeking answers to questions; an English-language service, with a dedicated children's search product (Ask Kids, 2008) and a separate UK-branded Ask Jeeves site.

Geography

United States-based, with corporate headquarters for Ask Media Group in downtown Oakland, California (555 City Center, Oakland City Center); founded in Berkeley, California. The service was available in English and operated international versions, including a distinct UK Ask Jeeves site.

History

Founded June 3, 1996 in Berkeley, California by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen; beta launched mid-April 1997 and full launch June 1, 1997 as Ask Jeeves. Ask Jeeves acquired the search engine Teoma on September 18, 2001 for more than $1.5 million. Ask Jeeves, Inc. traded on NASDAQ under the ticker ASKJ from July 1999 until July 2005, when IAC acquired the company in a transaction valued at $1.85 billion and the ticker was retired. The "Jeeves" name was dropped in February 2006 and the service renamed Ask. Product changes followed: a "Binoculars Site Preview" in search results (May 16, 2006), a 3D redesign (June 5, 2007), and the AskEraser opt-out privacy feature (December 2007). Ask acquired Lexico Publishing Group — owner of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com — on July 4, 2008, and launched Ask Kids in August 2008. In April 2009 the UK site reinstated the Ask Jeeves name with a CGI Jeeves character; the image remained until July 21, 2016 and the UK name until September 21, 2016. A closed-beta Q&A service opened July 26, 2010 and went public July 29, 2010, followed by an iPhone Q&A app in late 2010, Ask Around in 2011 and PollRoll in 2012. In 2010 the in-house crawler was shut down and search outsourced. Douglas Leeds became CEO in 2010 and later served as Ask Media Group president. The service was shut down on May 1, 2026.

Risks & controversies

Ask.com's core risk was competitive: it lost search market share to Google and Yahoo, leading to the 2010 shutdown of its in-house crawler, outsourcing of web search and the elimination of 130 search engineering jobs, and ultimately to the discontinuation of the business in 2026.