Screen capture from the homepage of Ask.com.
Once Emeryville Headquartered Ask.com Shutters Search Site
Internet search engine pioneer Ask.com officially shut down their search site on May 1. Originally founded as “Ask Jeeves” in Berkeley in 1996, it rose to prominence while headquartered at the EmeryStation campus holding its IPO in 1999.
In the late 1990s, Ask Jeeves was among a half-dozen search engines along with Yahoo!, Excite and Lycos duking it out for marketshare.
Ask Jeeves peaked at about 700 employees in 2000 before the dot com bubble trimmed this figure by a quarter. Google came along in 1998 soon dominated the search landscape rising to the #1 Search Engine by 2003.
Ask Jeeves eventually moved their headquarters to Oakland adorning a prominent downtown skyscraper at 555 12th street. They were acquired by technology holding company IAC in 2005 shedding their butler mascot and rebranding as Ask.com in 2006.