The Ask Algorithm can’t find Jeeves.
It looks like Ask.com is throwing in the towel. They are laying people off and reorganizing as a women’s search site. Remember Jeeves, the helpful butler? They froze Jeeves in carbonite, ala Hans Solo, about a year ago when they rebranded (I’m not kidding). I think it’s time to thaw him out.
I was listening to the Shoemoney show and he had some ideas about Microsoft buying Ask now instead of Yahoo, but I think he’s missing the point of why MS wants to buy Yahoo. It’s not the search algorithm they want, although it’s on the list. They want to own other business services and products Yahoo offers to block Google in other spaces. I think Microsoft understands where they are in the search engine race, and even though they would want the top spot, they know what they are really good at and where they can stop Google. Ask.com doesn’t have what MS is looking for.
Also, if Microsoft does buy Yahoo, they are not going to rebrand it. What was the name going around? MicroHoo? Yahoo is too big and very well branded. How many people think that Yahoo is the internet?
Anyway, AskJeeves was the first search engine I started using back in the day. I think I used Ask.com once. Ah, poor Jeeves. They had a great recognizable brand with him.
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