May. 5 at 1:32 AM
Ask.com officially closed its doors on May 1, 2026, after nearly 30 years in the search business
Founded in Berkeley in 1996, the site launched with its famous butler mascot, Jeeves. It was revolutionary for its time because it allowed users to type full questions (eg, "What is the capital of France?") rather than just keywords
In 2005, Barry Diller’s
$IAC acquired the site for roughly
$1.85B
By 2006, they rebranded to Ask.com & officially retired Jeeves to try & compete more directly with the rising dominance of
$GOOGL
By 2010, the company acknowledged it couldn't win the "search wars" against Google & outsourced its core search tech to focus on being a question-and-answer destination.
$GOOG Chrome: 67.97%
$AAPL Safari: 17.09%
$MSFT Edge: 5.52%
Firefox: 2.25%
Samsung Internet: 1.99%
Opera: 1.9%