SFist Tech Roundup: That’ll Be All, Jeeves

Oakland-based “global web property” Ask.com announced late last week that they’re phasing out the Jeeves persona that was beloved by some. Their reasoning was “user confusion,” in that bewildered users mistook the foppish cartoon for a real live British butler responding to their web queries, and would become flummoxed at having to type out complete questions instead of just keywords like “kittens” and “naughty college girls.”

We in the SFist labs can’t say we’re sorry to see Jeeves go, as we frankly can do without the pressure of subject/verb agreement and proper punctuation and pluralization when just asking a simple query like, “Where can I find a picture of Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Alba’s chests?” But to help take the sting out of his departure, we’ll do our best at providing SFist readers the answers to their burning questions: