AskJeeves was one of the popular search engines back in the old days, along with Google and Yahoo. With it, you get to ask direct questions and get answers from them. So where’s Jeeves now? After ten years of dutifully serving a growing population of internet users, Jeeves decided to step down as the face of AskJeeves, and retire in style. Jeeves symbolized a traditional, at-your-service butler which made people feel comfortable and at home with asking any type of question. Now, AskJeeves has simply becomes Ask.
Ask is a web2.0 ajax based search engine. With Ask, you can search anything from simple website search and images to Blog posts and Feeds, breaking news, ecommerce, Maps and Locations, Celebrities, People, stock quotes, and more. There’s also a nice snapshot feature called the Binoculars Site Preview, that allows you to see the snapshot of the respective websites. You can also use Ask to display conversion value, like currency or length, and translate words. For kids, the AskJeeves for Kids feature is now being replaced by its newer counterpart, Ask for Kids. Ask for Kids uses natural-language technology available at Ask, that allows kids to ask questions and perform web searches, such as “When did Hawaii become a state?” or “What’s it like to live in space?”or even “Convert 122 inches into feet” in the same way they would ask a parent, friend or teacher.
In December 2006, Ask has developed a newer version of its search engine, called Ask X. Below are the screenshots of both:
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The earlier version of Ask‘s results page is a 2 panes layout, whereas the new Ask X version is a 3 panes layout. Below are the screenshots of both, starting from the earlier version:
This is the Ask X result page with 3 panes:
Overall, Ask does have better search results and design than Google. The fact that Ask uses Ajax creates a much easier User Interface to digest and navigate. There are plenty of things you can do with Ask. One feature that really surprises us the most on how good it is is the AskCity feature. You can search locations (restaurants, hotels, etc), mark them, take snapshots, and/or send them via email to your friends. An excellent feature indeed. On a related news, Google has also been developing SearchMash, its newest Ajax-based search engine. We shall see which one stands out first.
So try out Ask, and see if you like it better than Google or Yahoo!
