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Ask.com

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Ask.com
Type of businessSearch Engine
Founded1996
HeadquartersOakland, California, USA
Key peopleGarrett Gruener
David Warthen (Founders)
Jim Safka (CEO)
Scott Garrell (President)
IndustryInternet
RevenueIncrease $227 Million
ParentInterActive Corp.
URLAsk.com
For other countries, see International.

Ask.com (or Ask Jeeves in the United Kingdom) is a search engine started in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California. The original search engine software was implemented by Gary Chevsky from his own design. Chevsky, Justin Grant, and others built the early AskJeeves.com website around that core engine. Three venture capital firms, Highland Capital Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, and The RODA Group were early investors.[1] Ask.com is currently owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp under the NASDAQ symbol IACI.

History

Ask.com was originally known as Ask Jeeves, where "Jeeves" is the name of the "gentleman's personal gentleman", or valet (illustrated by Marcos Sorensen), fetching answers to any question asked. The character was based on Jeeves, Bertie Wooster's fictional valet from the works of P. G. Wodehouse.

The original idea behind Ask Jeeves was to allow users to get answers to questions posed in everyday, natural language, as well as traditional keyword searching. The current Ask.com still supports this, with added support for math, dictionary, and conversion questions.

Ask.com headquarters in Oakland, CA

In 2005, the company announced plans to phase out Jeeves. On February 27, 2006 the character disappeared from Ask.com.

InterActiveCorp owns a variety of sites including country-specific sites for UK, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, and Spain along with Ask Kids, Teoma (now ExpertRank[2]), Excite, MyWay.com, iWon.com, Bloglines and several others. As of June 5, 2007 Ask.com relaunched with a new, simpler 3D look.[3]

On May 16, 2006, Ask implemented a "Binoculars Site Preview" into its search results. On search results pages, the "Binoculars" let searchers capture a sneak peak of the page they could visit with a mouse-over activating screenshot pop-up.[4][5]

In December 2007, Ask released the AskEraser feature,[6] allowing users to opt-out from tracking of search queries and IP and cookie values. They also vowed to erase this data after 18 months if the AskEraser option is not set. The Center for Democracy and Technology's positive evaluation of AskEraser[7] differed from that of privacy groups including the Electronic Privacy Information Center who found problems such as the requirement that HTTP cookies be enabled for AskEraser to function.[8]

On July 4, 2008 Ask.com announced the acquisition of Reference.com, which owns Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com, which had a combined 28 million unique visitors in March, according to Lexico. On April 20, 2009 the search engine was once again rebranded as Ask Jeeves in the UK, with a new 3D character and logo. The character Jeeves has returned to the US Site, but the site remains called "Ask."

In 2009, Ask.com brought Jeeves back for those who visit uk.ask.com in the United Kingdom, or AskJeeves.com in the United States.

Jeeves, currently seen when users go to AskJeeves.com instead of Ask.com

International

The company operates localised services for certain countries and its associated languages, including:

  • Ask.fr (France)
  • Uk.ask.com (Ask Jeeves) (United Kingdom)
  • Ask.de (Germany)
  • Ask.es (Spain)
  • Ask.it (Italy)
  • Ask.jp (Japan) (Closed)
  • Ask.nl (Netherlands)

Although Ask.gr is active, as of 25 April 2009 it is an independent search engine unrelated to Ask.com, nor there is any localised Ask.com service for Greece.

Corporate details

Ask Jeeves, Inc. stock traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange from July 1999 to July 2005, under the ticker symbol ASKJ. At the time of the IPO in 1999, ASKJ had the third best first-day performance in history.[citation needed] In 2003, it was the 51st best performing stock out of 3229 companies on the NASDAQ.[citation needed] In July 2005, the ASKJ ticker was retired upon the closing of the acquisition by IAC/InterActiveCorp, valuing ASKJ at $1.85 billion.

Ask Sponsored Listings

Ask Sponsored Listings (ASL) is the search engine marketing (or SEM) tool offered to advertisers to increase the visibility of their websites (and subsequent businesses, services, and products) by producing more prominent and frequent search engine listing results.

Marketing and promotion

Information-revolution.org campaign

File:AskJeevesAstroturfingLogo.png
The logo used by Ask Jeeves at www.information- revolution.org

In early 2007, a number of advertisements appeared on London Underground trains warning commuters that 75% of all the information on the web flowed through one site (implied to be Google), with a URL for www.information-revolution.org[9]. Links also appeared on the homepage of Ask.com and in videos on YouTube. Both the adverts and website were designed in shades of red, white and black associated with anarchist movements. The website was intended to foster debate about the use of search engines, with messages such as "One source isn’t choice". However, when web users found out that the site was actually a form of astroturfing by the marketing company Profero, the blogging arena became overwhelmed with negative messages berating Ask.com for their cynical attempt at marketing. Several users noticed the fact that for a short period, doing a search on Ask for "Google" would return the information-revolution site as the first result.[10]

Television advertising

Apostolos Gerasoulis, the co-creator of Ask's Teoma algorithmic search technology, starred in four television advertisements in 2007, extolling the virtues of Ask.com's usefulness for information relevance.[11] Furthermore, there was a Jeeves balloon in the 2001 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

NASCAR sponsorship

On January 14, 2009, Ask.com became the official sponsor of NASCAR driver Bobby Labonte's #96 car. It also announced that Ask would now be the official search engine of NASCAR.[12] Ask.com will be the primary sponsor for the No. 96 for 18 of the first 21 races and has rights to increase this to a total of 29 races this season.[13] The Ask.com car debuted in the 2009 Bud Shootout where it failed to finish the race but subsequently has come back strong placing as high as 5th in the March 1st, 2009 Shelby 427 race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.[14] Ask.com's foray into NASCAR is the first instance of its venture into what it calls Super Verticals.[15] This deep integration of content is found not only within the search results but also within a standalone section of the Ask.com site that is dedicated to NASCAR.

Ask houses the official site of NASCAR on FOX's much-criticized mascot, Digger, helping FOX's marketing of the character by supplying desktops, videos, and toolbars.

Toolbar

Example of an Ask search of Wikipedia.

The Ask.com toolbar is a free internet browser toolbar from Ask.com, available for both the Firefox and Internet Explorer web browsers.

Features include the web, image, news, and dictionary searches, the ability to save and share web pages and images through MyStuff, personalizable news feeds (ranging from local to international), weather forecasts, stock portfolios, maps, and related services.

The toolbar is often installed with another program. The user can uncheck a box during the installation of the original program if the user does not want the toolbar installed.

The Ask toolbar can be uninstalled from Firefox/Internet Explorer through the [Microsoft Windows|Windows] control panel. Ask.com remains the default web search until the user changes the setting. The Ask.com toolbar is incompatible with Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 installation. Presence of the toolbar causes license key corruption. [16]

References

  1. ^ Ask Jeeves, Inc. initial public offering prospectus
  2. ^ Ask.com Search Technology. Retrieved on May 11, 2009.
  3. ^ Major Relaunch For Ask: Ask3D, Techcrunch, 2007-06-04. Retrieved on June 5, 2007
  4. ^ United States Patent Database, US Patents, 2006-06-16. Retrieved on May 16, 2006
  5. ^ Ask Binoculars Improving Search Results?, Ask.com, 2006-06-16. Retrieved on May 16, 2006
  6. ^ Ask.com Takes the Lead on Log Retention; Microsoft and Yahoo! Follow, eff.org, Retrieved on 2008-01-03
  7. ^ "Letter to U.S. Federal Trade Commission" (PDF). Center for Democracy and Technology. January 23, 2008. Retrieved 2008-03-10. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ^ "Does AskEraser Really Erase?". Electronic Privacy Information Center. Retrieved 2008-03-10.
  9. ^ Information Revolution
  10. ^ "Ask's Anti-Google Campaign". outer-court.com. 2007-03-18. Retrieved 2007-03-28.
  11. ^ "About Ask.com: TV Spots". Retrieved 2007-04-25.
  12. ^ http://www.nascar.com/2009/news/headlines/cup/01/14/ask.com.partnerships/index.html
  13. ^ http://bbs.cid.cn.nascar.com/2009/news/headlines/cup/01/13/blabonte.hof.racing/index.html
  14. ^ http://www.ask.com/nascar/2009-Shelby-427-race#results
  15. ^ http://searchengineland.com/askcom-partners-with-nascar-says-super-vertical-will-put-it-back-in-search-race-16143
  16. ^ support.kaspersky.com/faq/?qid=208280158
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