Ask.com

General Questions
#1

i don’t know how many of you are familiar with the works of P.G. Wodehouse, but i hope you’ll take my word for it when i tell you that the “Jeeves” which ask.com uses is one of his creations. the interesting thing is, the web site makes no mention of this on any of its pages (all i could find were some press clippings that they’d posted which mentioned it, but this is not their own documentation). seems to me that they should be shelling out some royalties (he died in 1975, so copyright is still in effect). what do you all think?

ellis
(addendum: as i post this, i can’t see any other threads in GQ. what gives?)

#2

Jeeves has become the generic term for a butler, especially a very efficient one. (As a huge P.G. Wodehouse fan myself, I point out Wodehouse’s Reginald Jeeves was a valet, not a butler.) I’ve seen the name used a lot, but Wodehouse never gets cited.

#3

Or, as he calls himself a time or two, a “gentleman’s personal gentleman”.

And ask.com doesn’t know half what Jeeves does!

Bob the Random Expert
“If we don’t have the answer, we’ll make one up.”

#4

Does this mean that ask.com thinks its users are all simpering twits like Bertie Wooster?

#5

PapaBear-
apparently, seeing as the site is designed for people who can’t handle normal search engines, and have to type in “Where can I find the Boston Red Sox on the internet” instead of “Boston Red Sox” or “Boston AND Red AND Sox” on a normal search engine.

ellis

#6

The bad part is you have to use their silly question format. To use your example, if you entered “Boston Red Sox” as your search string, Ask.com will respond with “Do you mean ‘Where can I find information about the Boston Red Sox’?”.

I use dogpile myself…

“You can’t run away forever; but there’s nothing wrong with getting a good head start.” — Jim Steinman

Dennis Matheson — Dennis@mountaindiver.com
Hike, Dive, Ski, Climb — www.mountaindiver.com

#7

Pointless anecdote:
I was looking up looking up low level radioactive waste disposal (dont remembr the exact keywords) but the top 2 results were:

How drunk am I?
How do I build a nuclear bomb?

#8

I just heard a story about “Ask Jeeves” on NPR. They did cite P.G. Wodehouse as the creator of the character Jeeves.