Death of a Mascot: Ask Jeeves Axes Jeeves

Ask Jeeves, the search engine recently acquired by Barry Diller's InterActive Corp., is rebranding itself as Ask.com. This does not exactly come as a shock, since Diller had said such a move was under consideration, and the site has often called itself Ask.com in recent years.

I'm kind of relieved about it myself, because it will presumably end the strange story of the site's odd relationship with Jeeves, the immortal gentleman's gentleman who appeared in stories by British humorist P.G. Wodehouse. Ask Jeeves' founders, it seems, didn't seek the Wodehouse estate's permission before naming their site and equipping it with a butler named Jeeves as a mascot.

When the Wodehouse people grumbled, AJ initially maintained that their Jeeves was a different Jeeves. Eventually, they came to some sort of agreement. (To this day, the Ask Jeeves home page has a link to Wodehouse info, along with a disclaimer stating that the estate doesn't necessarily approve of the content on the site.)

Along the way, the Ask Jeeves Jeeves did any number of things that Wodehouse's creation (who was, above all, dignified) wouldn't have, such as advertise on porn sites, appear as a giant balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and, most recently, celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day. He was less a respectful tribute to the literary character than an uneasy doppelganger.

On the other hand, the AJ Jeeves certainly is taking care of himself: That's his 2001 self on the left, and his current model to the right. He's lost weight, gotten a tan, and is dressing better. Even his posture has improved.

Anyhow, Ask Jeeves the site is a survivor--one of the last major search engine from the mid-1990s that's still a contender. (It's the #5 search engine, after Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL, according to Nielsen NetRatings.) Let's hope that they give poor Jeeves a golden parachute, or at least a proper pension...