If you recall, I mentioned that the only real competitor to Net Shepherd's Answers.com was Ask Jeeves. Remember, that the market loved the Ask Jeeves IPO recently. The investment community really bought into the business application potential of this model.
Now, it is one thing to have the model, and it is another to be able to pull it off smoothly. I believe that Answers.com now has a window of opportunity to show just how good they are as compared to their competitor. If Answers.com can preform better than Ask Jeeves (and they can show the investment community this), then when NSI takes it to an IPO, then I believe it will do exceptionally well.
Here is one of the reasons why I believe Answers.com now has a window of opportunity to show that they should be considered a contender for the throne . . .
Crazy Canuk
__________________________________________________________
Ask Jeeves: This Butler Didn't Do It
Business Week
When I think of butlers, what comes to mind is a stoic, loyal manservant who almost invisibly runs a household, relieving his master of pesky day-to-day decisions and serving as the confidant who never criticizes. Almost invariably, he makes the right choice (except when 'the butler did it'). And he speaks with a clipped British accent--when spoken to.
So when I heard a butler was available on the Internet, I had to check him out. Could he live up to the movie butlers of my youth? Who better to resolve those nagging questions I could never pose to mere friends? Such as, 'Why can't I wear brown shoes with a blue suit?'
SOARING STOCK. Perhaps my expectations were too high. 'Ask Jeeves' (www. ask.com) is a search engine that promises to respond to questions phrased in natural English instead of the keywords or precise Boolean expressions other search engines require. And he comes most highly recommended: When Ask Jeeves went public on July 1, shares almost quintupled.
But what a bumbling butler this is. I asked a series of questions, many of which he simply ignored, having no answer at all to offer. For some, he had the temerity to suggest that his ignorance was my fault, that I had misspelled something, which I had not. To his credit, after he took his feeble stab at each question, he also consulted better-known search engines, though Jeeves says he filters those 'finds' to get rid of irrelevant flotsam. Separately, I did searches on AltaVista, HotBot, Excite, and Yahoo! to assess Jeeves's skill. The bottom line: Jeeves was outclassed by his more mundane brethren.
My first question was: 'Who is John Crean?' Crean is the founder and former chairman of recreational-vehicle maker Fleetwood Enterprises. (He can afford his own butler.) He also has his own cooking show on public television. Jeeves drew a blank. Other search engines linked Crean to both the company and the show on their first page of results. Yahoo! produced nine correct responses.
Then I asked: 'How do I make paella?' Jeeves passed on this one, too. His referrals to other search engines turned up a mixed bag of recipes, restaurants, and paella pans. By far the best results came from my separate inquiry on AltaVista, which also allows searches in question form. Its top 10 hits produced seven different recipes. That's what I asked for.
Ask Jeeves handles shopping questions slightly differently. In the movies, taking kickbacks from merchants would be grounds for a butler's dismissal. Jeeves cheerfully admits taking fees to feature certain companies on search results. His services are free to me, but even a virtual butler must make a living. I wanted one of those Walkman-like devices to play back music downloaded from the Internet, so I asked: 'Where can I buy a Rio MP3 player?'
WRONG AGAIN. I shouldn't have been shocked when Jeeves whisked me off to the Sharper Image Web site, a provisioner of gadgets to the carriage trade at prices to match. But by questing for a handsome commission, Jeeves outfoxed himself: The upscale merchant doesn't even carry MP3 players. Yahoo! and AltaVista provided links to shopping bot www.bottomdollar. com, which let me find the cheapest supplier. A proper butler would have known that's more my style.
Finally, I asked Jeeves how many liters are in a jeroboam, something every respectable butler should know. Jeeves produced a useless metric-conversion table with no reference to wine-bottle sizes. When I typed 'jeroboam' into search engines, I got wining and dining links that gave the correct answer (3 or 4.5 liters, depending on whether one pours a conventional or sparkling wine). At www. butlersguild.com, home of the International Guild of Professional Butlers, I found an 'Ask Jeeves' E-mail link, presumably to a real butler fielding etiquette inquiries. I sent my question. The next day, I got a listing of all bottle sizes. This Jeeves also politely admonished that while I could pour from a three-liter jeroboam at table, there's a 'fair chance' I'd ruin the tablecloth.
My advice? If you need a search engine, use a search engine. If you need a butler, find a real one. Ask Jeeves handles neither job with the confidence and savoir faire of a professional.
BY LARRY ARMSTRONG
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE: Never Mind, Jeeves
Ask Jeeves, at www.ask.com, is a search engine that lets you pose questions in natural language rather than keywords.
PLUSES
No need to deal with Boolean distinctions between and/or. No need to enclose terms in quotation marks to distinguish what you are looking for.
MINUSES
Fumbled basic questions that were quickly answered on other sites. Results were sometimes skewed by fees paid by companies for prominent placement in results. |
