Ask Jeeves was doing this before Google existed…
Wonder if there a way bring any of these types of services back and be affordable? Like the part of chatting with older people. There are lots of old people in this world who would love to have some to talk with.
GOOG-411 was created specifically for Google to gather voice samples, with different ages, accents, etc. to train voice recognition. It was never for the sake of providing a service.
Not talking about that one. The article mention multiple different types of platforms.
Ask Jeeves wasn’t an actual person though
Ask Jeeves was a “question answering service” back then. They had a staff of human editors who curated answers to popular questions. Nothing they answered back then was done via search.
Source: I worked for a search engine startup in the 90’s that was acquired by Ask Jeeves when they realized they needed a true search technology since human editing wasn’t scalable.
I didn’t even know about these services. It’s fascinating they were relevant for about ten years only. What a good read.
I had heard of them but had no idea there were so many of them or that they were so successful
118 118 had great ads. My friend and I dressed as the 118 118 guys for a sports event at work. :-D
Ain’t that so sweet
