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It's difficult to remember a time before Google search, when the world of information was constantly at our fingertips on smartphones and computers via an internet connection. But when the online revolution started, there was another search engine that predated Google - and after 30 years it has finally been shut down for good.

Ask.com, the website formerly and most famously known as Ask Jeeves, cased to function on May 1, 2026.

"Every great search must come to an end", reads the site when you point your browser to Ask.com today.

The domain's owner, InterActiveCorp (IAC) has made the decision to close down the site, presumably due to its vanishingly small user base.

Ask Jeeves was launched in June 1996, predating the first incarnation of Google search, which debuted in September 1998. Ask Jeeves was one of the first search engines to encourage the use of natural language, a notion at the time that was alien to first time internet users unfamiliar with what the technology could achieve.

By personifying the search engine as Jeeves, a butler named after a P.G. Wodehouse character, people were more inclined to ask Jeeves a question, such as, "what are the best pubs in London?" or "what was the Liverpool score?", rather than simply typing in keywords such as "pubs" or "sports".

As the trove of data and information on the web grew, more specific searches were needed in order to find certain webpages successfully.

"As IAC continues to sharpen its focus, we have made the decision to discontinue our search business, which includes Ask.com," Ask.com now reads.

"We are deeply grateful to the brilliant engineers, designers, and teams who built and supported Ask over the decades. And to you-the millions of users who turned to us for answers in a rapidly changing world-thank you for your endless curiosity, your loyalty, and your trust.

"Jeeves' spirit endures."

Ask Jeeves successfully fought with early search engines such as Yahoo and AltaVista before Google swooped in and dominated. Ask Jeeves was rebranded to Ask.com in 2006, with the Jeeves character popping up every now ans then to play on people's nostalgia for a simpler internet in an attempt to claw back some market share.

Though Ask Jeeves encouraged us to ask natural language questions in the late 1990s, throughout the 2000s, Google searches became detached from this. It was common to keyword stuff to find what you were looking for rather than type a question, as people found it garnered better results.

Today, Google with its Gemini AI product and competitors such as OpenAI are once again returning to the idea of natural language to search and find information, though this tech is presented like an ongoing text conversation with a chatbot, rather than presenting you with a page of search results.