Ask Jeeves sells for 1.85 billion
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I've had to use them for site search at one point. At the time they indexed all the content manually :laugh:. So when they got behind they requested an extra payment to hire more "indexers" to get through the backlog. So after that they were only a few weeks behind. Oh, and the free indexing service that came with the OS did a better job. So, even though they were slow they made up for it by being really expensive.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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Even though it seems a bit much for all of us using google, one has to consider that AJ is used by a lot of non-tech people. People tend to think that you can actually ask jeeves a question by putting in a long phrase complete with punctuation. I think that's where they get a lot of their visitors. That said, the AJ devs have been doing some pretty cool sentence examining algorithms, allowing the engine to "answer" questions like this one.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. I'm currently blogging about: He has a funny face. And he's my son. Judah Himango
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Even though it seems a bit much for all of us using google, one has to consider that AJ is used by a lot of non-tech people. People tend to think that you can actually ask jeeves a question by putting in a long phrase complete with punctuation. I think that's where they get a lot of their visitors. That said, the AJ devs have been doing some pretty cool sentence examining algorithms, allowing the engine to "answer" questions like this one.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. I'm currently blogging about: He has a funny face. And he's my son. Judah Himango
You're right. I worked one summer in a bookstore loading dock. And one of the major pastimes was asking "Jeeves" stupid questions to see what responses we would get. Its not that great a search engine though (and this is coming from a die-hard Wodehouse fan) "One of the Georges," said Psmith, "I forget which, once said that a certain number of hours' sleep a day--I cannot recall for the moment how many--made a man something, which for the time being has slipped my memory."
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I've had to use them for site search at one point. At the time they indexed all the content manually :laugh:. So when they got behind they requested an extra payment to hire more "indexers" to get through the backlog. So after that they were only a few weeks behind. Oh, and the free indexing service that came with the OS did a better job. So, even though they were slow they made up for it by being really expensive.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
Hmm, sounds like they were on to something! 1) Slow 2) Really expensive 3) ??? 4) Profit!!! I could swear I've seen this somewhere else... ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
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You're right. I worked one summer in a bookstore loading dock. And one of the major pastimes was asking "Jeeves" stupid questions to see what responses we would get. Its not that great a search engine though (and this is coming from a die-hard Wodehouse fan) "One of the Georges," said Psmith, "I forget which, once said that a certain number of hours' sleep a day--I cannot recall for the moment how many--made a man something, which for the time being has slipped my memory."
I just tried my all time favortime question: Why does X11 suck so badly? I noticed that at the top of the list was a link to a site that allowed one to meet and date married women. :) ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
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I just tried my all time favortime question: Why does X11 suck so badly? I noticed that at the top of the list was a link to a site that allowed one to meet and date married women. :) ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
And I tried "Messmore Breamworthy", a fake name used in "Uncle Fred in the Springtime" and it stumped Jeeves too. Google hunted something out from some forum somewhere for the same search term. "One of the Georges," said Psmith, "I forget which, once said that a certain number of hours' sleep a day--I cannot recall for the moment how many--made a man something, which for the time being has slipped my memory."
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Even though it seems a bit much for all of us using google, one has to consider that AJ is used by a lot of non-tech people. People tend to think that you can actually ask jeeves a question by putting in a long phrase complete with punctuation. I think that's where they get a lot of their visitors. That said, the AJ devs have been doing some pretty cool sentence examining algorithms, allowing the engine to "answer" questions like this one.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. I'm currently blogging about: He has a funny face. And he's my son. Judah Himango
Judah Himango wrote: People tend to think that you can actually ask jeeves a question by putting in a long phrase complete with punctuation. I think that's where they get a lot of their visitors. It used to be like that when it first launched. Back in high school (98-99 ish) we would skip past the automated web searches to get on to the human operators then ask them all kinds of silly questions and they would try their best for thirty minutes to find answers for. Things like "what is the boiling point of egg yolk", etc. :-D
Ðavid Wulff The Royal Woofle Museum
Audioscrobbler :: flikrDie Freiheit spielt auf allen Geigen
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Judah Himango wrote: People tend to think that you can actually ask jeeves a question by putting in a long phrase complete with punctuation. I think that's where they get a lot of their visitors. It used to be like that when it first launched. Back in high school (98-99 ish) we would skip past the automated web searches to get on to the human operators then ask them all kinds of silly questions and they would try their best for thirty minutes to find answers for. Things like "what is the boiling point of egg yolk", etc. :-D
Ðavid Wulff The Royal Woofle Museum
Audioscrobbler :: flikrDie Freiheit spielt auf allen Geigen
You evil genius you. :-)
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. I'm currently blogging about: He has a funny face. And he's my son. Judah Himango
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Hmm, sounds like they were on to something! 1) Slow 2) Really expensive 3) ??? 4) Profit!!! I could swear I've seen this somewhere else... ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
Jim Crafton wrote: I could swear I've seen this somewhere else... Oracle??? :-D Marc MyXaml Advanced Unit Testing YAPO
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I have never heared of Ask Jeeves -.- Not a very big company
On the news they said Ask Jeeves was currently the fourth largest search engine behind Google, Yahoo and MSN Search. And Ask Jeeves' own financial statement puts it at the 9th largest Web based company in the world. Steve T
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I have never heared of Ask Jeeves -.- Not a very big company
On the news they said Ask Jeeves was currently the fourth largest search engine behind Google, Yahoo and MSN Search. And Ask Jeeves' own financial statement puts it at the 9th largest Web based company in the world. Steve T