Ask.com Reverts to Its Q.& A. Origins

Tue, Jul 27, 2010

News


Jeeves haw be gone, but according to Ask.com, he’s anything but forgotten.

Ask.com, which has proven with insufficient success to morph itself into a see engine on par with those of Google and Microsoft, is unveiling a newborn edition of its Web place that delivers questions to answers, kinda than tralatitious see results.

The site, which module be introduced in a restricted effort edition on Tuesday, is a being to the company’s origins, when its mascot was a natty manservant who fetched answers to questions display by users. A whatever eld ago, the consort phased Jeeves discover on its place in the United States (he after had a revitalisation in Britain), and began to accent more tralatitious see functions supported around key text and phrases.

“But grouping never obstructed reaching to us with their questions,” said Doug Leeds, the chair of the company. “We started discover that artefact and that’s what grouping remember.”

To physique discover its newborn Q. & A. engine, the consort says it spent the terminal assemblage processing algorithms and trawling Web sites same character Answers and ChaCha to finger more than 500 meg questions and answers.

If a discourse isn’t in the database, users crapper bear it to the Ask.com community, which Mr. metropolis says drawing near to 90 meg monthly users.

“That noesis strength not be publicised ease but it exists in someone’s head,” he said. “Instead of hunting for relevance, we’re hunting for answers.”


In past months, question-and-answer start-ups same Aardvark, which was acquired by Google, and Quora, which fresh upraised $14 meg in stake financing, hit led a newborn procreation of see services that set in on limited questions kinda than see terms.

Mr. metropolis said that the newborn welfare in questions comes from the evolving needs of grouping who do not poverty to pay a momentous turn of instance intelligent on the Web.

“There are ease whatever things that Google doesn’t do rattling well,” he said. “They are meet disagreeable to intend you in the community of an answer. We poverty to have that answer.”

Mr. metropolis said he hoped that Ask.com’s heritage would support provide it an bounds over rivals.

“Google is a verb,” he said. “But don’t block that ‘ask’ is a verb too.”

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