Ask Jeeves: The Man Behind The Magic
Ask Jeeves used to be a powerhouse in the search engine world. However, while Ask Jeeves opened up the knowledge of the world to us, we know very little about the person behind it all: Jeeves, age 42. Thankfully, he was very happy to let The Lemon Press do a Q&A with him — on the condition that we didn’t mention, allude to, or otherwise imply the existence of ‘Yahoo!’.
Q: Only recently, it was found that ‘autonomous’ robots which deliver food on the UC Berkeley campus were controlled by operators in Brazil for $2 an hour. Do you think the public knew what was going on behind the scenes at Ask Jeeves?
A: I would hope so. Our company was called ‘Ask Jeeves’ and we even had a caricature drawn of the winner of Mr Jeeves 1997 as our logo. We were very upfront about it. We could have personally sent our answers to you in an envelope, guaranteed to be licked by someone called Jeeves if that would help convey the message, but that would have been rather time-consuming…
Q: How many of you were there?
A: I was the first but we had as many as 10,000 at one point. We must have taken every single Jeeves from California, San Diago to Sacramento. We hoovered them up. Whenever we had a new employee we would all wear our name badges and… well… Jeeves would get a hell of a welcome. I was Jeeves numero uno.
Q: I have to ask, what caused Ask Jeeves to become Ask?
A: We left. All of us. Spending your days answering questions is alright for the first few years but eventually you end up asking yourself, ‘is this what I was destined to do?’ We all moved to set up a commune in Haight-Ashbury. We’re very happy.
Q: How did you compete with fierce competition such as Ask
Italian?
Ask Italian missed a trick, they were too busy being a casual dining restaurant chain that they missed the opportunity of a lifetime: a search engine which would give answers exclusively from Italians. We didn’t directly compete per se but the threat was always in the background, it messes with your head after a while. We knew they could pivot their business in a heartbeat and simultaneously stop ours dead.
Q: What’s your next step?
Right, I’m going to be honest here. I’m a middle-aged man who spent the best years of his life answering trivial questions like ‘where does Princess Diana live?’ from the dumbest specimens in society. My wife left me for a bozo called Bing in 2005. I’m broke. We live in a society. Stop asking me questions. I’m
leaving.
Will Rowan
This article was originally featured in issue 42
