‘Jeeves’ fades into Internet history

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, February 26, 2006

Time flies when you’re navigating the world without getting out of your chair.

“Ask Jeeves,” one of the Internet’s original, most user-friendly and recognizable search engines, has seemed like ancient history for some time now. But its demise is now official.

The new Ask.com takes its place, and the image of the helpful butler now seems as current as the “Where the beef?” lady from Wendy’s.

It’s amazing that it was only 10 years ago that Jeeves first graced our computer screens, promising to answer any question we had. Before you could “Google” anything, or find marginally accurate information on Wikipedia, you could “Ask Jeeves.”

This isn’t meant to sound like an obituary for a real person, or anything, but it never hurts to take a moment — a quick one, I promise — to recognize how quickly everything is changing these days.

So, here’s to Jeeves (1996-2006). May he rest in cyberpeace.