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So long Jeeves and Ask.com, relics of yesterday’s internet

The Seattle Times·Ali Watkins The New York Times·29 days ago
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In the digital wilds of Y2K, we came to him with our most probing questions. He told us about Britney Spears, tamagotchis, former President George W. Bush and Beanie Babies. We asked, and he answered: Jeeves, the digital butler of information, the online valet who led us into the depths of cyberspace. Now, like so many other relics of yesterday’s internet, Jeeves — and his home, Ask.com — are no more. After almost 30 years, the Q&A service and former search engine shuttered Friday. “To you — the millions of users who turned to us for answers in a rapidly changing world — thank you for your endless curiosity, your loyalty, and your trust,” the company said in a notice posted on its now-defunct website. The death of Ask.com is, perhaps, a Rorschach test for our current digital crossroads: proof of the internet’s unyielding change-or-die law, or the decay of a simpler digital time. Before Claude Code, Grok and Gemini, Jeeves was there in a modest, everyman suit.…

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