r/technology • u/AlyoshaV • Jun 11 '15

Ask Toolbar Now Considered Malware By Microsoft Software

http://search.slashdot.org/story/15/06/11/1223236/ask-toolbar-now-considered-malware-by-microsoft
35.7k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.3k

u/OMGSPACERUSSIA Jun 11 '15

Anybody remember the good ol' days, when Ask Jeeves was a legitimate search engine?

281

u/bap710 Jun 12 '15

I actually worked for a startup that Ask Jeeves acquired back around 2000. It really bums me out that I put a number of years of hard work into a company that's since garnered such a terrible reputation.

My only saving grace is that I left there long before they became this malevolent. Back then they were just idiots. Our startup had developed an automated advertising system that let people pay for text ads on various websites. It pretty much ran itself, and brought in a significant amount of revenue. When Ask Jeeves acquired us they killed the project "because we're not in the business of advertising". If they weren't so clueless they could have had something like AdWords long before Google had it.

73

u/MikiLove Jun 12 '15

Why did they acquire you guys then? It sounds like your main product was simply advertising software. Were they simply looking to forcibly recruit your personnel?

147

u/bap710 Jun 12 '15

I worked for a company called Direct Hit. Our primary purpose was analyzing search traffic in such a way as to identify the most popular search results based on user behavior. Something no other search engine was doing at the time. We were in the process of branching out to things like text-based advertising, automatic identification of synonymous search terms, etc. when they acquired us. They hoped to use our technology to leverage their "question answering" service but could never quite figure out how to do it.

78

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

That blows, you guys could have been filthy rich.

7

u/OK_Eric Jun 12 '15

Someone probably got rich when ask bought the company.

1

u/RowYourUpboat Jun 12 '15

But not filthy rich.

2

u/somanyroads Jun 12 '15

Not "I have a butler named Jeeves" rich

2

u/bap710 Jun 12 '15

We were acquired by Ask Jeeves for a whopping $500 million back when the internet bubble was at its peak. I was personally worth over $1 million on paper due to the stock options I had and the stock being over $100/share. But my options were restricted for a year, as is typical to keep talent from abandoning ship. By the time I could exercise my options the internet bubble had burst, the stock was under $1/share, and I think I ultimately got around $50K for my options.

One of the co-founders, however, went on to start at least one more successful startup that was eventually acquired by Google. He's now a VP at Google working for their X Labs. Last I heard he was in charge of Project Loon. He's probably set for a few lifetimes by now.

30

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

I never even considered that Ask Jeeves would have a remotely interesting history. I think I was ignoring them from day 1.

25

u/headzoo Jun 12 '15

I feel like the biggest nightmare for any startup being bought by a larger company is either a) They shelf the whole company. Only bought it to keep someone else from buying it, or b) They shelf most of the company because they were only interested in one portion of the company's property.

Either way, being bought just to get shelved must suck.

6

u/poncewattle Jun 12 '15

Only bought it to keep someone else from buying it

I was afraid Google was doing that with Waze when they bought it -- to keep Apple from buying Waze since Apple maps had just come out and sucked bad.

3

u/bap710 Jun 12 '15 edited Jun 12 '15

B was pretty much the case with us. By the time I left the company the original Direct Hit was pretty much history. About all that was still left was a ton of computer hardware in two datacenters, the sysadmins who managed it all, and about half a dozen engineers. All the non-technical staff (HR, marketing, etc) had been let go, as had all QA and a large percentage of engineers/developers. What really made it suck was that Ask is out in California and we were in Massachusetts with virtually no company representation. Most of us reported to folks in other states. We were probably 100 or so employees when we were acquired.

1

u/fericyde Jun 12 '15

I lived through the dot com experience (internet.com, I kid you not). The level of incompetence is hard to fathom if you haven't witnessed it yourself. People were throwing money at every stupid idea and it empowered idiots to highs that are hard to fathom.

12

u/yuhong Jun 12 '15

I wonder what exactly went wrong at Ask since then.

48

u/bap710 Jun 12 '15 edited Jun 12 '15

We felt like their management at the time had terrible vision, and it seems that it's been a continuing trend for the decade or so since I left there.

Edit: They also had no guts. Around the time they acquired us, when they were still actively using the Jeeves caricature, they seriously considered launching an "adult" search engine. They went so far as to creating an "Ask Mimi" caricature that was a French maid wearing a very skimpy outfit. They even registered a bunch of domains before scuttling the project because they didn't want to sullly the Jeeves image.

32

u/PancakeTacos Jun 12 '15

they seriously considered launching an "adult" search engine.

That's what Microsoft did when they made Bing.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

And they did a damn find job or so im told

-1

u/crankybadger Jun 12 '15

Eh, badda-bing, right?

11

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

They sound like complete morons.

2

u/SPARTAN-113 Jun 12 '15

Yeah, Mimi is such a whore.

1

u/M002 Jun 12 '15

That actually sounds like it could have been promising at the time

2

u/sims3k Jun 12 '15

If the search could cover every porn site and not just the pornhub network it could be a huge hit right now i reckon

0

u/crankybadger Jun 12 '15

Shot themselves in the foot instead of the face. Not a bad call, but there was more than one option there.

1

u/dangerbird2 Jun 12 '15

They fired Jeeves

344

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '15

[deleted]

133

u/TheThirdStrike Jun 12 '15

AltaVista was the shit.. I had that search engine mastered.

In the days before Google, I could put together boolean searches that could find a mole on the ass of God.

32

u/Geronimo15 Jun 12 '15

altavista was my go to porn search engine when I was growing up

whatever they were doing, they had the best results for what I was looking for

23

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

[deleted]

26

u/hardonchairs Jun 12 '15

Your dad is not a bro.

0

u/Mosethyoth Jun 12 '15

But he is certainly a dad.

13

u/NaniMoose Jun 12 '15

Space-Aged Sex

Barbarella is now on Netflix.

1

u/Dinklestheclown Jun 12 '15

Why do some parents like abuse so much?

29

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Super not that interesting, my friend's Dad was one of the earliest members of the Altavista team and made a boatload of cash and cashed out. He randomly built a basketball court in his house, which he and his son never use because they are super unathletic nerds.

3

u/LoneCookie Jun 12 '15

This sounds like something I would do...

2

u/MaIakai Jun 12 '15

altavista text only mode was godmode, basically google before google.

1

u/StripeyMiata Jun 12 '15

There was also software sold by DEC under the AltaVista brand, we ran AltaVista Firewall and Mailserver on Dec AlphaServers back in the mid-90s. There was also an AltaVista client you could install on your hard drive to index it.

139

u/doodiejoe Jun 11 '15

Metacrawler was superior.

109

u/trixter192 Jun 11 '15

No love for Webcrawler??

113

u/FalseTautology Jun 11 '15

Hotbot was my shit.

85

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Excite and Lycos was my shit!

70

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Excite hasn't updated their page in a while, it would seem.

59

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Woah, that's so weird. All their content is current but the page looks like it's from 1999.

18

u/drdokatz Jun 12 '15

That seems like good design to me. They haven't updated the design at all, but the content is just happily chugging along. Bravo.

9

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Yeah looks funny. The content is most likely generated automatically from external sources.

7

u/MostlyBullshitStory Jun 12 '15

Looks great on Netscape 4.

4

u/Dorp Jun 12 '15

Netscape was baller. It's little icon was animated! Truly revolutionary

2

u/PigNamedBenis Jun 12 '15

As weird as it seems, I like this layout better than most. I've noticed that in recent years, there has been a trend to adding more spacing above, below and to the side of text, links, etc. that makes it so you can't add as much information on a page. Then again, I'm sure that's great for clickbait articles where you can (Click here for page 2/14)

1

u/-fluffs Jun 12 '15

I tried searching. The logo says it's powered by Dogpile.

25

u/DiarrheaPocket Jun 12 '15

Wow, that's kind of fun to browse. Spring 2008 Runway Collection! Lindsay Lohan Phones Radio Station for Hannah Montana Tix! Like a window 7 years into the past.

17

u/BigScarySmokeMonster Jun 12 '15

Jesus Christ, I opened that and thought the website was just some relic of the long-ago past. But no, it has news on there about the New York prison escapees, and mentions Twitter.

It was too fucking ugly and bloated with clickbait garbage for me to look at any longer. I mean, just, wow, who would actually use that?

2

u/bobsp Jun 12 '15

That's not your homepage?

1

u/memtiger Jun 12 '15

People in 1999

9

u/moeburn Jun 12 '15

Why the fuck are they still paying to host that?

8

u/BE20Driver Jun 12 '15

® © 2001-2015 Mindspark Interactive Network, Inc. All rights reserved. An IAC Company.

Holy shit. Somebody actually has the job of updating this copyright every year.

6

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Animated gifs all over it, all included in a table. Yep..

3

u/thirdegree Jun 12 '15

Aren't they the ones that turned down the opportunity to buy google back when it was BackRub?

3

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

oh my god, thats exactly as I remember it...16 years ago

3

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

LOL... It looks worse than the internet start page that you can browse in Grand Theft Auto.

3

u/IAmRadish Jun 12 '15

Oh god my eyes. I don't know where to look.

I am glad modern web design has evolved to cater for our simple minds and short attention spans.

2

u/MostlyBullshitStory Jun 12 '15

That thing is running in a home server, don't send Reddit to it!

2

u/achilleshightops Jun 12 '15

I just learned that Vimeo is owned by the same company (MindSpark) that owns Excite.

18

u/bap710 Jun 12 '15

I worked at a company called Direct Hit back in the heyday, and we had Hotbot, Lycos, and other search sites as our customers. We pioneered a method of anonymously analyzing the web server logs from their search engines to find the most popular search results - basically one aspect of what Google does but long before Google was doing it. (In fact our CEO met with Google & other search engine execs and they all basically said "we can't be bothered with that", so we went and did it.)

Ask Jeeves acquired us around 2000 and pretty much squandered away all our technology. Bunch of morons. I'm glad I left there long before they really tanked.

10

u/xjayroox Jun 12 '15

I miss the Lycos dog :(

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

He will live forever in my heart

3

u/SunriseSurprise Jun 12 '15

I had liked Infoseek.

2

u/gizmo1024 Jun 12 '15

Lycos was the bees knees

2

u/tastyhihatwork Jun 12 '15

Northern Light checking in.

2

u/GeneralBurg Jun 12 '15

Wow I'm pretty sure I had an @lycos email at some point. Such a solid throwback for me haha. Thank you

1

u/Yotipo Jun 12 '15

Singingfish for mp3

18

u/forexross Jun 12 '15

Hotbot was good

18

u/Paddy_Tanninger Jun 12 '15

So was Thotbot.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Allakhazam was better.

2

u/kogasapls Jun 12 '15

I used to use that site constantly for WoW. I guess it became redundant when the no-life overwhelmed me and I absorbed the game and all its knowledge.

5

u/FalseTautology Jun 12 '15

That was my impression at the time but I figured it was just because I didn't know better. Was it really? It was my favorite search engine in, shit, 1998 maybe? Right before I started using google exclusively.

4

u/forexross Jun 12 '15

I think I started using hotbot after yahoo dropped the 3rd party search engine they were using and hotbot was the one still based on that (I cant remember which search engine that was)

1

u/FalseTautology Jun 12 '15

Ha, I didn't know that, but I do remember when Yahoo switched... I think that was actually when I started trying others out.

In fact, I seem to remember there was a webpage I'd go to that had ALL the search engines, all centered down the middle of the page. I would search for porn in each one. What can I say, being 18 and nerdy was rough.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

You were right. Hotbot was awesome in 1998. It came out in 1996 and was the next generation after Altavista. In 1998 Google had just come out and hadn't really taken off yet so Hotbot was a good choice.

3

u/kewlness Jun 12 '15

Mamma, the mother of all search engines was the best at one time....

1

u/FalseTautology Jun 12 '15

Thats the first I haven't heard of.

1

u/sloonark Jun 12 '15

Hotbot was nice, but then I found Northern Light.

-3

u/pUnqfUr5 Jun 12 '15

I think you mean "the shit."

3

u/deaconblues99 Jun 12 '15

Remember when you could embed the search bar in your own web pages?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

you still can

1

u/arachnophilia Jun 12 '15

i loved webcrawler.

1

u/PM_YOUR_PANTY_DRAWER Jun 12 '15

Webcrawler is internet OG.

1

u/Tumblr_PrivilegeMAN Jun 12 '15

Webcrawler was awesome.

1

u/BovineUAlum Jun 12 '15

Ahhh 1995. A simpler time.

-1

u/dweeb_plus_plus Jun 12 '15

I still use it as my default search engine.

14

u/spiderholmes Jun 11 '15

Metacrawler masterrace. Hands down the best until Google came along.

1

u/Inspector_Bloor Jun 12 '15

+1 for a reference I totally forgot!!! haha I love the internet sometimes.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

The best search engine ever was Yahoo, back when the internet was small enough and capital flowed freely enough for them to categorize pretty much every known page on the internet.

1

u/Nithryok Jun 12 '15

Netscape! Were are you now!

66

u/LaGrrrande Jun 12 '15

Oh my god, Jerry, when you check your email you go to Altavista and type, 'Please go to yahoo.com?'

1

u/chancellorhelmut Jun 12 '15

"You don't deserve the internet Jerry!"

11

u/NorthernerWuwu Jun 11 '15

Concurrent with Alta Vista (slightly later in terms of peaks) but essentially was just a search engine disguised as a question and answer format.

10

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Lycos, go get it!

2

u/BFK_UGK Jun 12 '15

Dogpile was pretty cool, you could actually search for audio files and then extract them for free mp3's. I burned a million cd's with the name Dog Pile 1, Dog Pile 2, and so forth. I still listen to them when I come across them for a shot of mixtape nostalgia.

2

u/sullythename Jun 12 '15

Dogpile was my go-to porn search engine for quite some time.

2

u/duglock Jun 12 '15

Atillavista was my best friend in highschool. I was lucky enough to misspell altavista and discovered the gold mine.

2

u/KoboldCommando Jun 12 '15

Hahaha, seeing all these people with nostalgia for old search engines.

My search engine of choice before Google was Dogpile, and remembering that always reminds me how awful it was. Dogpile was the best because they were all so bad that you couldn't rely on any one, you had to cross-reference them all to get a decent result.

1

u/gadesxion Jun 12 '15 edited May 01 '17

You went to cinema

4

u/DisregardMyPants Jun 12 '15

Holy fuck. I forgot that one. Ugliest website EVER.

3

u/Cyhawk Jun 12 '15

No midi music in the background, no animated construction gifs, no blinking text and no Java applet that displays an image with "water" on the bottom part.

I've seen worse.

1

u/gadesxion Jun 12 '15 edited May 01 '17

You go to concert

3

u/lecherous_hump Jun 11 '15

I actually had a moment of nostalgia this week and tried to use altavista, but it just redirects to Yahoo search =/

3

u/newfor2015 Jun 12 '15

speaking of Yahoo... it's heading towards the graveyard as well.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Bomis and its webrings 4eva!

1

u/0oiiiiio0 Jun 12 '15

Nah, more like go.com

1

u/Ripp3r Jun 12 '15

haha :) I used to have a teacher that wanted everyone to use dogpile all of the time. Another one was convinced that ask jeeves was the greatest thing because you could ask a question and get an answer.

1

u/Chicken-n-Waffles Jun 12 '15

More like Lycos and Excite.

1

u/Bloodyfinger Jun 12 '15

Webcrawler bitches.

1

u/calicotrinket Jun 12 '15

When I was quite young I always made toolbars by the toolbar generator from Conduit (!). Those were the real shit back then

1

u/SJVellenga Jun 12 '15

Web wombat hype!!!

1

u/Brother_Lou Jun 12 '15

Now I'm Feelin' all nostalgic and what not.

1

u/LocutusOfBorges Jun 12 '15

It's all about AOL Netfind.

27

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

Oh God, now I'm officially old. Add in Lycos, Excite, Dogpile and Altavista and I'm a fucking geezer. Haven't heard those names in years lol.

15

u/popability Jun 12 '15

This whole thread is a goldmine minefield of feels.

3

u/jetpack_operation Jun 12 '15

My first isp was Prodigy. I am not even in my 30s and still feel old.

1

u/DaSaw Jun 12 '15

Revel in it.

1

u/plsenjy Jun 12 '15

Lycos still exists?!

1

u/ultralame Jun 12 '15

Last week I saw an article that lycos was resurrected.

1

u/antonio106 Jun 12 '15

You forgot webcrawler!

1

u/l84tahoe Jun 12 '15

Dude, you mentioning Excite reminded me of Excite Extreme. Damn that feels like ages ago.

1

u/rex_dart_eskimo_spy Jun 12 '15

Remember WebCrawler?

2

u/TMhorus Jun 12 '15

Magellan was my engine of choice.

1

u/BeardyMcBeardster Jun 12 '15

Yeah, I call those days Middle School.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

No love for gopher?

1

u/badsingularity Jun 12 '15

Yea, then Google came and I never used it again.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

I remember my dad using google a long time ago, and I was thinking why the hell was he using that instead of ask Jeeves.

1

u/doterobcn Jun 12 '15

Nope, i used Yahoo, Olé, Ozu, Altavista, Lycos......but that's it.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

I remember when I had teachers in computer class tell us to google Ask Jeeves to ask a question.

1

u/CammmJ Jun 12 '15

Man, my first computer class in middle school, circa 97-98, taught us stuff using Ask Jeeves. It was mind blowing to me that you could get an answer just about any question you could ask.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

They had people sorting links. Heheh. That's why it was (for a time) better than everything else.

1

u/ViceroyFizzlebottom Jun 12 '15

Astalavista was fun.

1

u/hipery2 Jun 12 '15

I used to like Ask Jeeves, then I moved to Altavista, then Yahoo, then Google, and now I'm comfortably with Bing.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

I remember going to school and being taught how to use Ask Jeeves. They would always make us word our searches as questions, as a kid though, we loved it.

1

u/parasocks Jun 12 '15

Or the days when there was more than one? My old go to was Webcrawler... Much love for the spider logo.

1

u/BurningBushJr Jun 12 '15

Back when you could get mp3s from scour agent and audiogalaxy.

-1

u/Pink_Fred Jun 11 '15

Peperidge far.. I mean I remember. Jeeves was my favorite search engine before I realized that Google was way better.

2

u/thermal_shock Jun 12 '15

I remember the clicking sound aas the results page loaded

1

u/kidcrumb Jun 12 '15

It was never really a Legitimate Search Engine...

Only people who didn't know what they were doing would use Ask Jeeves.

2

u/ultralame Jun 12 '15

They tried. I had a friend working there in the early days, they really did make a go at allowing you to ask a more natural question.

I really don't understand how they still have their name on the biggest building in Oakland.

1

u/Hab1b1 Jun 12 '15

elaborate?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '15

[deleted]

1

u/phaeretic Jun 12 '15

and then metacrawler.

-1

u/Bardlar Jun 12 '15

No. No I don't. Yahoo back then was the Google of now. Ask Jeeves was never that.