IAC shuts down Ask.com, ending 25 years of search history

Ask.com has gone dark, closing on May 1, 2026, after 25 years as part of IAC’s decision to discontinue its search business. In a farewell note, the company thanked the engineers, designers and other teams behind the product and told users, “Jeeves’ spirit endures.”

The shutdown closes the book on one of the web’s earliest consumer search brands. Ask.com was conceptualized and developed in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California, and launched in 1997 as Ask Jeeves before dropping the Jeeves name in 2006. What began as a quirky, personality-driven search engine became a recognizable name during a period when the internet still felt open to competing brands and different ways of helping people find information.

Ask was once large enough to matter in the broader search market. IAC said in 2012 that Ask.com had more than 100 million users globally. That same year, Ask.com agreed to acquire The About Group from The New York Times Company for $300 million in cash, folding About.com into a search-and-content business that IAC said was built to reach users at scale. Ask Media Group’s own brand page later said its portfolio reached 245 million people a month globally.

Even as the business was being wound down, IAC kept resetting its portfolio. The company’s current corporate materials say it is now primarily comprised of publisher People Inc. and its strategic equity positions, a sharp contrast with the era when search was one of its most visible consumer products. IAC also announced in June 2023 that Brad Wilson had been appointed chief executive of Ask Media Group, a reminder that the unit remained active until the end.

Ask’s closure reflects a larger shift in how people find information online. The search market has long been dominated by Google, and newer AI-driven tools are now competing to become the next default entry point to the web. With Ask.com’s shutdown, another branded doorway to the internet disappears, along with a reminder of a time when search felt more varied, more personified and less concentrated in the hands of a few infrastructure giants.