From USA Today:
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — IAC/InterActiveCorp Chief Executive Barry Diller likes his latest planned online acquisition. He’s just not that fond of its name.
Diller on Tuesday told an audience of media and executives that the more he learns about the search capabilities of Ask Jeeves Inc., which New York-based IAC is buying for $1.85 billion in stock, the more convinced he is that the firm can gain market share against search rivals Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.’s MSN.
Ask Jeeves will get an infusion of cash for marketing and development, but its brand name is unlikely to survive in its current form.
“We’re thinking about renaming it,” Diller said during a question and answer session at the D3 — All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad. “It probably won’t be called Ask Jeeves.”
The conference was sponsored by The Wall Street Journal.
“What will it be called?” asked conference host and Wall Street Journal columnist Kara Swisher.
“Might be one of those words without the other,” Diller answered. The new name has not been decided, he added.
So which one Ask or Jeeves? Jeeves wouldn’t be much of a change. Ask by itself presents its own issues, for starters it would have to fight for mind share with the just-launched Answers.com and the already-established About.com. They’d be looking at Ask.com, Answers.com & About.com — talk about muddy. And none of the three sites could ever drop the “.com” from their name, because all of their names are too generic to trademark without it.
Of bigger concern is the track record of generic brands on the web, especially in this space. Remember FindWhat, LookSmart, InfoSeek, AllTheWeb, etc? How about Pets.com, Drugstore.com or Business.com? And there are no intellectual property laws stopping anyone from launching AskAbout.com, AboutAnswers.com or AskAboutAnswers.com.
Any way you slice it, the choice between Jeeves and Ask is a real Diller pickle.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Gary // Mar 28, 2006 at 9:11 pm
My wife and I told everyone about Ask Jeeves. We thought it was such a catchy name. We never used Google or others because ask jeeves was always there for us. We especially like the characters at different holidays.
Too bad you changed the name….will still use it and good luck!!
2 Jennifer // Jun 23, 2006 at 1:14 pm
I always use ask.com, but I was sad to notice that Jeeves was gone. I enjoyed his customs and funny poses. I’m sad to see him gone….
I’ll still use the search engine anyway…
Jennifer, New Jersey
3 Paula D. Ward // Feb 2, 2007 at 10:34 am
Why mess with a good thing? People often don’t know when to leave a good thing alone. I liked the idea that there was some ‘figure’ connected to Ask.com. None of the other search engines have anything like Jeeves. I liked the idea because the idea of the “butler” knows everything – and the poses and other funny things that the system designers would do for him. I mean, Jeeves could have had sweatshirts, mugs, all kinds of paraphanalia! Please reconsider. I miss his figure and all he represented to the web-world.
4 Denis R.P.Rolfe // Oct 7, 2009 at 8:04 am
I agree with Paula D.Ward. To get rid of such a well known and used trademark is sheer stupidity. I have always used it in preference to any of the others because of the Jeeves connection. Whether I will continue to do so is now in doubt.
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