From “Why is the sky blue?”
to “Every great search must come to an end.”

The December 3, 1998 capture is a yellow page with a green search bar and a red Ask! button. Many of its images are blank in this capture. Their alt texts are still in the code: Play a Game, New User Tour, E Postcards and Funny You Should Ask!. One image promised New! First Auction. Click Here for Non-Stop Action!

The small print is better. A line says Here are November's most popular questions! on a page saved in December. Another sells Ask Jeeves for Kids as PC Magazine’s Editors’ Choice for best kids search engine. The trademark line in the footer ends with the name of the machine that served the page: (server: www3).

The butler, borrowed from P.G. Wodehouse’s novels, had beaten genies, librarians, and the Answer Man for the job, its creator David Warthen told WIRED. Behind the box was a library of questions. WIRED, writing in June 1997 about a site officially launched on June 1, reported that incoming queries were matched against a knowledge base of more than 5 million template questions.^[1]

In April 1999 the instruction stays the same and the example changes: Where can I learn about MIDI? A red column on the right says Ask me about: and lists Computers, Entertainment, Family, Health, Money, Shopping and Travel. Below it, a heading reads Here's what others are asking right now! over a text field, and the question frozen in this capture is about regulations for small businesses.

The page is starting to sell things. Ask Jeeves Store Now Open! sits next to Corporate Systems, and the footer offers How to advertise and Send your Resume to Jeeves! Three months later, in July 1999, Ask Jeeves was listed on the Nasdaq.^[2]

Some questions had jokes waiting for them. WIRED reported in 1997 that spoof questions such as What is the meaning of life? returned droll easter eggs, written into the database by the staff of five researchers.^[1] We checked the homepage captures, not the joke answers.

June 2000 is the first capture here in which the drawn Jeeves survives in one piece. He stands in a black suit and points across the page at a slogan: Have a Question? Just type it in and click Ask! A list down the left offers Personal Jeeves, Answer Point, Money, Travel, Health and more, and beside the butler a small sign reads Jeeves Daily Trivia.

Almost everything here is a picture. Remove scripts, styles and tags, decode the HTML entities and count what is left: the code holds 35 words of text, most of them the legal line at the bottom: ASK JEEVES, ASK.COM and the JEEVES DESIGN are service marks of Ask Jeeves, Inc. The butler was a trademark, and so was the address.

That November he left the screen. ABC News’ report on the 2000 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York listed the Internet butler Jeeves among the characters, next to Cassie from Dragon Tales and Ronald McDonald.^[3]

Our June 2001 capture is deep blue, and the question has changed voice. Now Jeeves asks you: What can I help you find? The tip under the box no longer asks for a sentence: Name your category; e.g., "Rams Football" or "Dodge Ram Pickup." Keywords are welcome.

The boxes below sit in a bamboo frame with palm leaves. One sells Cast Away with Discover a Journey of Hope & Survival and a special edition DVD. Another, sponsored by Norelco, is headed A Very Comfortable Shave and links to Dot.comers embrace wireless face technology. The footer lists international sites, Ask Jeeves Español (Pregunta.com), UK and Australia, and two links you would not expect on a search engine: About P.G. Wodehouse and Editorial Guidelines for Answers.

A year later the tip in the 2002 still is even looser: Use a question, phrase, or word - Jeeves is flexible. The tips rotated. The HTML saved with the same capture has another one, Be specific. "Organic gardening" works better than "gardens." Down the page, a box called Road Trips & Colossal Cows points to giant cows and the World’s Largest Strawberry.

The 2003 page is the friendliest of them all. Jeeves stands in the middle of a cream page and says Greetings. What can I help you find today? Below him a red wave carries five icons: Search Pictures, Search Products, Search News, Top Searches and Ask Jeeves Kids. One line sells the toolbar: Put the Butler in Your Browser.

By June 2004 the greeting has become an instruction: Please enter your search below. The button next to the box no longer says Ask. It says Search. By June 2005 the butler has shrunk to a small figure beside the logo, a row of tabs offers Web, Pictures, News, Local (marked NEW!) and Products, and the line under the box covers both kinds of visitor: Search with Keywords or Questions. The red wave now offers Bloglines and MyJeeves BETA.

That March IAC had announced a deal to buy Ask Jeeves for about $1.85 billion, net of the cash it would take over. The filing calls Ask Jeeves a company founded in 1996 and lists its own search technology, Teoma.^[2]

A capture from February 1, 2006 is still Ask Jeeves. It shows MyJeeves BETA, a link to P.G. Wodehouse, and an image search suggestion, Try Omarion.^[4] On Monday, February 27, WIRED reported that Ask was jettisoning Jeeves as its mascot and unveiling a retooled site. The company believed its search tools were as good as Google’s, if not better, and that the butler made that hard to say.^[5]

Our March 1 capture shows the result. No butler. A red oval reads Ask with .com underneath, over a white page and one box. Under the box: Welcome to the new Ask.com. Send us your feedback. On the right a panel called Search Tools lists Web, Images, News, Maps & Directions, Local, Weather, Encyclopedia, Shopping, Desktop and Bloglines.

The footer is the giveaway. The Wodehouse link is gone, and the copyright line now names the owner: ©2006 IAC Search & Media.

2005: “Search with Keywords or Questions.” 2006: “Welcome to the new Ask.com.”Our June 2005 and March 2006 captures, before and after the rebrand

Ask relaunched in early June 2007 as Ask3D.^[6] Our June 14 capture puts the logo, now glossy and without the .com, beside a blue-grey search panel inside a grey rounded frame. Icons above the box choose Web, Images, City, News or Blogs. The browser tab says what the company wanted to be: Ask.com Search Engine - Better Web Search. The 3D had nothing to do with depth. Search Engine Watch explained it as three panels for the three stages of a search: type a query, review results, click through.^[7]

The page’s code also holds a hidden Skins link and the choices behind it: AskX, Azul, Cartas, Flower, Golden, Pink, Polka Dots, Rotunda, Timber Brume, Western Sky and Default.

In June 2008 a pile of ties spills into the corner, under It's Father's Day! Celebrate the ties that bind. Top right there is a new link: AskEraser. Launched in December 2007, it let you have your searches deleted from Ask’s servers. Ars Technica pointed out the catch: some query data still ended up in Google’s databases, through the ads Ask showed.^[8]

By June 2009 the blue-grey search panel is gone. A white page, still in a rounded frame on grey, holds the logo, one long box and a single line of links: web, images, news, videos, maps, and lots of answers. The footer has a link to NASCAR®. The skins are still in the code, now with Autism Speaks, Notre Dame, Colosseum and Stars & Stripes among them, and a comment a developer left behind reads Bittorent Tabs param, misspelling and all.

That spring the butler came back, in one country. In April 2009 paidContent reported that Ask was bringing Jeeves out of retirement in the UK only, for now. The report cited a survey in England that put aided awareness of the Ask site at 72 percent and of the butler, retired three years earlier, at 83 percent.^[9]

Our September 2010 capture’s browser tab reads Ask.com - What's Your Question?, and the page asks one too. A light blue background holds a Question of the Day: What's an aglet?, with 82% of users knew the answer. Do you? Under it, Popular Questions asks what LED stands for, how to do a backflip and where piranhas live. A box called Answers for the Cure® invites you to Join over 2 million supporters fighting breast cancer on Ask.com.

That summer Ask had gone back to answering people. WIRED described an invitation-only community where volunteers answered questions.^[10] In November TechCrunch reported that Ask was giving up on its own web search technology, outsourcing it to a company it did not name, and laying off 130 search engineers in New Jersey and China.^[11]

Our June 2011 capture looks like a step back: a plain white search page, web, images and videos., and the old Better Web Search title. The code behind its Themes link offers a theme called Avatar Pandora.

From 2012 the quiz is the homepage. June 2012 asks What state is nicknamed The First State? with four answers to click and 60% of users knew the answer. Below it, Real People. Real Answers. lists questions from members, from Why is breakfast so important? to what to do after you apply for a job online and nobody calls back. We blurred the members’ names and pictures.

In our 2013 capture the button next to the box says Find Answers instead of Search. A poll asks If Princess Kate has a boy, what will she name him? and offers Charles, George, William and Edward. A comment in the code reads Fix to load ask logo and search button before rest of the page gets rendered.

The June 15, 2014 capture has penguins behind a question about emperor penguins and a poll: Who's your favorite TV dad? The choices are Philip Banks, Danny Tanner, Homer Simpson and Cliff Huxtable. In 2015 a beach photo fills the top, the question is Why do schools have summer vacation?, and a label files it under K 12.

In June 2016 the quiz, the photos and the community are gone. What is left is the logo, one box with a blue magnifier button, and a grey band of 20 topic links from Art & Literature to World View. The browser tab still asks What's Your Question?

In 2017 the copyright line changes to © 2017 IAC Publishing, LLC, and the logo is absent in this capture, which leaves a lone search box. In 2018 and 2019 even the topic band is gone. Strip the scripts and the code of each page holds 18 words, counting the title and the footer.

Our June 2020 capture is filled with articles. A small logo sits above the search box, a white banner with red text reads What You Need to Know About the Coronavirus Pandemic next to CDC and World Health Organization logos, and a slideshow leads with Learning to Be Actively Antiracist, a reading list. A left menu offers Culture, Travel and Entertainment. Trending articles run down the right, Bruce Lee among them.

June 2021 keeps the shape. The lead asks Should You Care About the Streaming Wars? over a wall of streaming logos, and a blue bar links to the latest on the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines. At 813 words, it is the wordiest capture in this collection. The browser tab still reads Ask.com - What's Your Question? The answers are now articles.

In June 2022 the Question of the Day comes back as a quiz card next to a TV & Movies lead: Which one of these current releases doesn't feature a multiverse? The code holds the answers along with the replies: Incorrect – Try Again! for Everything Everywhere All at Once, Dr. Strange 2 and Loki, and You Are Correct! for Top Gun: Maverick. A comment says the page is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin.

Then the same question appears in our next three captures. July 2023, June 2024 and June 2025 all ask Which of these is a top home security company? The options are FrontPoint, SimpliSafe, Scout and All of the above, and the code marks only the last one You Are Correct!. The 2024 and 2025 pages even share their lead story, about celebrities with unusual pets.

The June 15, 2026 capture has no search box. Under a small red logo, a headline in serif type says Every great search must come to an end. The text explains that IAC has decided to discontinue its search business, which includes Ask.com, and that After 30 years of answering the world's questions, Ask.com officially closed on May 1, 2026.^[12]

Then comes a line in italics, "To the millions who asked...", and a thank-you to the engineers, designers and users. The whole page has one link, to its privacy policy. Its code labels the sections plainly: The Logo, The Headline, The Gratitude.

In 1998 the page wanted a whole question and gave an example, Why is the sky blue? In 2026 it has no box to type into. Jeeves left the homepage in 2006 and does not come back in any later capture here. He still gets the last line of the last page, set on its own under the thank-you: Jeeves’ spirit endures.