When I first heard that Ask.com had shut down on May 1st, my initial reaction was to be surprised that it was still around.  I always figured that it had shut down in 2006, around the same time that it retired Jeeves as its mascot.  After I got over my surprise, I felt surprisingly sad.  Another part the early Internet is gone.

Kids today might not believe it but there was a time when people used several different search engines instead of just typing all of their queries into Google.  Yahoo was the big one but people also used Lycos, Altavista, DuckDuckGo, Infoseek, AllTheWeb, and several others.  And, if you wanted a personalized experience, you asked Jeeves.  Jeeves would not only answer your questions and give you links but he would do so in the voice of a dryly humorous British manservant.  Before AI, there was Jeeves.  And Jeeves made a lot less mistakes!

Jeeves is gone now and so is a large part of the Internet’s early history.  Today, we take Google for granted and no one calls this place the “information super highway” anymore.  Jeeves might not seem like a big deal to those who never met him but, for many of us, he represents a time when the Internet was new and exciting, when it was a collection of niche sites as opposed to a soul-sucking Behemoth.  Sadly, future generations will never know the joy of Jeeves directing them to the most comprehensive Simpsons fan site on Geocities.  I feel bad for them.

RIP, Jeeves.  Thanks for the memories.