Back in the early days of web searches, circa 1999, there was one fictitious dude confused surfers could always turn to for answers. His name was Jeeves, and for whatever reason, he was supposed to be a butler. Perhaps his profession was an attempt to make ordinary people feel important and pampered. Or maybe the mascot's purpose was to conjure up warm and fuzzy nostalgic feelings for the long lost Mr. Belvedere. While his back story never came to light, Askjeeves ruled the search world for several years before being brutally trampled by the sinister forces within the Google Empire. Part of Jeeves' appeal came from the innovative question and answer format that resembled s useful magic eight ball. But then the search world turned to selecting relevant content via keywords and algorithms. To keep up with the times, the company abandoned poor Jeeves at some off ramp in the middle of nowhere along the information superhighway. Henceforth, they became known as Ask.com, which is commonly referred to as the #4 search engine; that is the polite way of saying they will soon join Jeeves in the realm of pop culture obscurity.

In a last ditch effort to make a splash, or even a sputter, the company unveiled its new old format today. Those who are old enough to remember the internets a decade ago will instantly recognize the return of the question and answer fueled search system. Curiously, Jeeves is still nowhere to be found. Anyway, now when you log on to Ask.com, you are greeted with a short list of the most asked questions, just like in the good old days. Only the content that appears after you hit enter is actually pertains to the topic at hand, unlike the listings of yesteryear. For example, when I ask, "How evil is Google," I get a page full of articles that explore this very topic. Clearly, they've managed to blend their two methods of obtaining results, which creates for a user friendly design that manages to be useful at the same time. Personally, I've caught myself phrasing Google search queries in the form of a question only to get bizarre and disappointing listings. So, for me at least, Ask.com's return to the interrogative model is a welcome throwback.

While I love their search basis, the rest of the site leaves a lot to be desired. The question and answer format doesn't work well in terms of images, and this aspect of the site is almost embarrassing. There's only 15 results per page and they didn't spring for any cool extras either.

Yawn.

Sadly, the news feeder isn't much better. It pulls up irrelevant content after the first couple of articles, which is frankly unacceptable at this point. Their video page is a little better, but I would never actually use it, so I don't have much to compare it to. The map feature is truly disappointing. The so-called street view is nothing more than a distant image that must have been shot from a helicopter. Unless you've got a pilot's license, this thing isn't going to help you get from point A to point B without getting lost.

In sum, I love the plain search aspect of this redesign, but the rest of the site can only be described as pathetic. I hate to do this, but I'm going to have to give Ask.com a big fat FAIL. So much for finding an independent alternative to the likes of Google...