With Google pretty much owning the search market space around the world, it’s easy to forget there are other search engines out there. And I’m not talking about Bing or Yahoo.
Ask Jeeves launched as a question-and-answer based search engine in 1996 and, well, it’s still ambling along. Today, it’s officially announcing the launch of its new mobile app, bringing its ‘Question of the Day’ direct to iOS users in the UK.
The Question of the Day app allows users to access stimulating questions and answers, such as ‘what bird barks like a dog?’, ‘how many hairs does a person lose a day?’ and ‘are the eyes the window of the soul?’.
As well as capturing the current Question of the Day, the app will recall the previous 60 questions and allow users to access Ask.com for broader search queries. Yes, it can still be used like a search engine too.
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“The Question of the Day has been running on the Ask Jeeves homepage for many years and is increasingly popular as Brits search for fun facts and thoughtful trivia on the search engine,” says Shane McGilloway, Chief Revenue Officer at Ask Jeeves.
“By launching this app, we can bring the popular service direct to people’s phones, ideal for entertaining them on a train journey, or while grabbing a snack for lunch,” he continues. “As general mobile traffic has picked up in the UK, and we are seeing that more and more users are accessing Ask Jeeves through their mobiles, this was the clear next step in our product development.”
Ask.com attracts more than 100 million users from around the world, and says its mission is to “increase personal knowledge by empowering people with answers.” Whilst there is an existing Ask.com iOS (and Android) app for the US market, this latest introduction looks to tap the ‘pub quiz’ Q&A addiction that seems to be particularly popular in the UK.
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