ASKJ >>> Ex Yahoo VP-Business Development and others on Board
You never expected your single most useful discovery on the Internet would be a butler, did you?
It's a jungle out there, this Internet. On the one hand, it's the greatest, most fertile repository of answers ever created by humankind - more in number, variety, quality. On the other hand, it's so massive and overgrown that it's very difficult - often impossible - to find what you need. (Ask a question, get a million matches, thanks for nothing.) Indeed, you probably view the Internet as being somewhat shaggy, wild, even downright uncivilized. (Jeeves thinks it no mere coincidence that we call it the "Net," implying that we can get tangled up in this "Web" of information. Think about it.)
Well Jeeves is here to tame the Net for you. He loathes disorder and lives to serve. He wishes only to make your experience of the Net more civilized. Once you get familiar with what Jeeves does for you - you and only you; you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - he's confident that you, too, will be uttering the most-often used description he hears: Long live Jeeves.
So the Net's biggest problem, then - it's difficult-to-negotiate-ness - is a byproduct of its greatest virtue. Well, how does Jeeves suppose to make your experience of the Net more civilized, less frustrating, easier? How can Jeeves become your indispensable helpful and friendly guide? (A friendly face on the Internet? How enterprising.) How can this strange but undeniably intriguing tuxedoed Samaritan do this, you ask?
Jeeves Speaks Your Language
On the Net, no one speaks your language. They make you speak their language. A language that's arcane, obfuscating, and includes words that no one is entirely sure what they mean. Jeeves says "Enough!" Jeeves lets you ask a question the way you'd ask it in the real world (imagine that!). Jeeves understands your question in your words. Jeeves prefers your question in your words.
Jeeves Knows Your Answer Before You Ask The Question
Not to sound cocky, but Jeeves has already listened to millions and millions (and millions and millions) of questions, and has catalogued the answers to them so that - the vast majority of times - he's already experienced this. (He'd say "Been there, done that," but Jeeves considers it such a pedestrian phrase.) Even better, with every question you ask, Jeeves actually gets smarter, and gets to know better the kinds of things you want to know in the future. He's done the hard work so you don't have to.
Jeeves Can Answer Anything
As the Web's premier answerer of questions (if he may be so bold), Jeeves can answer questions that are hard or easy, small or large, deadly serious or goofily offbeat. On subjects of every kind. Ask, and Jeeves shall respond.
In short, Jeeves is delighted to be your personal guide through this expansive - sometimes too-expansive - resource. A butler for as far back as he cares to remember, Jeeves now lives to serve you and you alone. He's friendly, smart, periodically witty, and at your service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He never requests time off for holidays, and has yet to call in sick. Type a question for Jeeves just the way you'd phrase it if you were asking a particularly knowledgeable friend. Dutiful butler that he is, Jeeves will immediately and intrepidly begin navigating through hundreds of millions of web sites to find just the answers you need, and deliver the results quickly and thoroughly to your screen.
Jeeves does not accept gratuities.
Why Should I Use Ask Jeeves?
A fair question, and Jeeves believes (as always) that he's got the answer. Wouldn't you rather communicate on the Net in ways you're already familiar with? Ask Jeeves is unique in affording you just that convenience - a friendly and straightforward way to navigate the Internet accurately. At Ask Jeeves, you may ask questions on the Internet in the same way you would of a friend or colleague. Jeeves then retrieves the information, drawing from an extensive knowledgebase of millions of answers to the most frequently asked questions, from people all over the world. How many questions has Jeeves already been asked, you ask? Try 150 million and counting. And every minute - every second, in fact - Jeeves listens to new questions he hasn't yet answered and goes out to get the answers to those questions. May he be frank? Jeeves has been doing this for years. He's been doing it for millions of people. He's gotten really, really good at this. He knows just where to go on the Internet to get your answer, fast. Because when you're experienced at making your way around the Net, it's actually rather easy. Not for you, but for him. That's why he's the guide, and you're the one who's no longer thinking about tossing your computer out the window.
In fact - and Jeeves can't divulge names here, or he might be the subject of a lawsuit - Jeeves has for years been answering the questions of movie stars, government officials, famous business people, royalty, writers, and many, many more smart people. Jeeves even answers the questions of some of the people who run - you should pardon the expression - "search engines." Imagine that: When they want answers, they ask Jeeves! Bet they wouldn't want Jeeves to advertise that, would they?
That's a whole lot of curious people Jeeves has helped, and he would be thrilled if you're the next.
While Ask Jeeves is constantly expanding and revising its knowledgebase, Jeeves also has partners who help get other answers from other search engines, too. Chances are, you'll find what you're looking for the first time you ask Jeeves your question.
Ask Jeeves operates two sites on the Internet. Ask Jeeves (www.ask.com) answers questions on every imaginable (and, come to think of it, unimaginable) topic, from "Who invented the Slinky?" to "What is the total weight of the earth without people?" Ask Jeeves for Kids (www.ajkids.com) provides a safe, smart, and fun Web search for 7-14 year olds. Editorially selected questions and answers are combined with a screened metasearch to provide kids with a safe, yet broad, search environment. Ask Jeeves for Kids was picked by PC Magazine as the best children's search engine of 1998, and as one of the top 100 sites for 1998.
So How Does Ask Jeeves Work?
Jeeves is of the opinion that most people want simple answers to their questions. He further believes that they don't want to go through some complicated process to get those simple answers. Therefore, Ask Jeeves allows you to ask your question in plain English.
You don't have to provide "keywords" or, heaven forbid, "Boolean search strings," if you even knew what a keyword or Boolean search string was. (Some of us here aren't even sure.) Instead, you simply type in a question, IN YOUR NATIVE ENGLISH, THE LANGUAGE YOU USE WHEN CONVERSING THE OTHER HOURS OF THE DAY WHEN YOU'RE NOT SLEEPING, and Jeeves provides a concise list of answers with their exact location, instead of an exhaustive list of matches.
Can Ask Jeeves Do More Than That?
So glad you thought to ask that. Yes. Ask Jeeves works not just for individuals, but for businesses, too. "Powered by Jeeves" licenses the Ask Jeeves cutting-edge technology to corporate websites so that customers may ask plain English questions and quickly find the information they need. Jeeves acts as a customer service agent, a technical service agent, a sales agent, and a navigation agent all in one. It frightens Jeeves even to think of how much money and time is being saved by companies smart enough to employ him as their agent.
What's The Technology That Makes Ask Jeeves Run?
Ask Jeeves is a unique question-answering system that allows users to ask questions in plain English, then delivers the answer. As one of the most sophisticated navigation systems on the Internet, Ask Jeeves combines a unique natural language engine with a proprietary knowledgebase. Taken together, this mechanism processes the meaning and grammar of real questions in plain English; provides intelligent responses for user confirmation; links directly to relevant, high-quality answers; and, perhaps most exciting of all, gets smarter over time, as its knowledgebase expands with each question asked and each answer delivered.
How Exactly Does Ask Jeeves Work?
Just curious, are you? Or starting a rival company? No matter. Jeeves doesn't keep secrets from anyone. The Ask Jeeves technology is a four-step process that provides you with fast, accurate answers almost instantly. Once the user asks a question of Jeeves, the process goes like this:
Ask Jeeves attempts to understand the precise nature of the question by using a question-processing engine. Using natural language processing technology, Ask Jeeves determines both the meaning of the words in the question (semantic processing) as well as the meaning in the grammar of the question (syntactic processing).
Ask Jeeves's answer-processing engine provides the question template response—that's the list of questions that users see after they ask Jeeves a question. When the user clicks on a response, the answer-processing engine retrieves the answer template that contains links to the answer locations.
The Ask Jeeves knowledgebase contains links to more than 7 million answers, which contain information about the most frequently asked questions on the Internet. Smart lists allow one question template to point to many answers (e.g., "What is the population of <city name>?").
To assure users that they'll get the best answers to their questions, Ask Jeeves also has partners who provide answers, to supplement those answers Jeeves has found. This guarantees that the user finds the best answer by including the top ten answers from other leading "search engines." Ask Jeeves searches these answers as well, to eliminate duplication. Coupled with the knowledgebase, the Ask Jeeves "one-stop shop" for question-answering has grown extremely popular with our ever-expanding and delightfully loyal customer base.
Who Came Up With Such A Great Idea, And Could They Come To My Home To Program My VCR?
Ask Jeeves is the brainchild of Garrett Gruener. Ten years ago (the Stone Age, in Internet years), Garrett recognized that people would want and need a simple way to negotiate the massive, often disorganized, collection of information on the Internet. So Garrett and David Warthen developed the prototype for this unique question-answering service, with one deceptively simple mission in mind: To provide people with the fastest, easiest way to answer questions online. Period. Their groundbreaking technology provided both new and experienced Internet users with a fun, intuitive, comprehensive navigation tool, and because users could ask questions exactly the way they might phrase them to a friend or colleague, their Internet experience was infinitely humanized. No more navigation trees. No more complicated Boolean strings. No more searches resulting in "24,764 matches," which were (and are) often close to worthless. Warthen and Gruener then went a step further in humanizing the Internet experience by creating Jeeves.
For this final stroke of genius, Jeeves is exceptionally grateful, and hopes you are too.
Garrett Gruener is on the board of Ask Jeeves. David Warthen is the company's Chief Technology Officer.
The Ask Jeeves Timeline:
April, 1997 - Ask Jeeves launches the first of its advertiser-supported public Internet sites, www.ask.com.
July, 1997 - Roger Strauch and Dan Miller, co-founders of TCSI Corporation (Nasdaq: TCSI) and the Roda Group, join the Ask Jeeves executive team.
November, 1997 - Ask Jeeves is incorporated.
March, 1998 - Ask Jeeves for Kids www.ajkids.com is born. The children's version of the site exploits the Ask Jeeves technology and experience to provide a fun and secure site for children. Ask Jeeves for Kids goes on to win numerous industry awards.
June, 1998 - Rob Wrubel joins Ask Jeeves as President and Chief Executive Officer (Link to bio).
October, 1998 - Ask Jeeves launches the "Powered by Jeeves" licensing program, designed to provide corporate sites with a "smart" service agent interface that helps companies improve their ability to respond to, and interact with, their customers.
December, 1998 - Dell Computers introduces Ask Dudley, their online customer service agent.
Who's On The Ask Jeeves Management Team?
Robert Wrubel, President and Chief Executive Officer.
Prior to joining Ask Jeeves, Mr. Wrubel was chief operating officer of Knowledge Adventure, Inc., one of the country's largest and most profitable children's software companies. Mr. Wrubel oversaw product development, online education business development, technical support, customer service and end-user sales. He also was responsible for setting strategic direction for the company and for a number of mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Wrubel has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University.
M. Bruce Nakao, Chief Finance Officer.
Mr. Nakao brings more than 25 years of experience in corporate finance to Ask Jeeves. Most recently, Mr. Nakao served as senior vice president and chief financial officer at Puma Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq:PUMA), where he oversaw finance, human resources and information systems and managed the company's initial public offering. Mr. Nakao also served as senior vice president and chief financial officer at Adobe Systems (Nasdaq:ADBE). During his ten-year tenure, his responsibilities included taking the company public and building the financial and administrative infrastructure to support the company's growth from $4.5 million in revenues and 45 employees to $762 million in sales and 2,300 employees worldwide. Mr. Nakao has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Washington and is a graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Ted Briscoe, General Manager, Consumer Question Answering Service.
Mr. Briscoe joins Ask Jeeves from Iomega Corp. (NYSE:IOM), where he served as a member of the executive management team that led the company's explosive growth. Most recently, Mr. Briscoe was president of the Personal Storage Division at Iomega, where he was responsible for sales, marketing, product development, finance and operations of the $1.2B division. Prior to joining Iomega, Mr. Briscoe held various sales and marketing positions at Apple Computer (Nasdaq:AAPL) and IBM (NYSE:IBM). Mr. Briscoe has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Westminster College.
Frank Vaculin, General Manager, Corporate Question Answering Service.
Mr. Vaculin has a long track record of managing rapidly growing sales and marketing organizations. Prior to joining Ask Jeeves, Mr. Vaculin was a senior vice president of North American Sales for Softbank Services Group. He has also held various vice president level positions at Borland International. Mr. Vaculin has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of San Francisco.
David Warthen, Chief Technology Officer.
Mr. Warthen is a co-founder of Ask Jeeves and an expert in the development and implementation of information processing algorithms. He previously founded Desktop Software, a custom software development firm, and served as director of engineering at Virtual Microsystems, Inc. Mr. Warthen has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, San Diego.
Larry Fishkin, Senior Vice President, Business Development.
Prior to joining Ask Jeeves, Mr. Fishkin served as vice president of business development for Yahoo! Marketplace, Ziff-Davis' Information Access Company, and Relevance Technologies. His responsibilities included developing partnerships and joint ventures, undertaking mergers and acquisitions and managing new business development. Each of these companies was acquired during his tenure by Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO), the Thompson Corporation and Documentum Inc. (Nasdaq:DCTM), respectively, for over a half billion dollars. Mr. Fishkin has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Rochester and is a graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
For more information, contact jeeves@ask.com.
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