Jeeves gets the pink slip

What a long strange trip it's been for the fictional, net-based "butler of information" Jeeves. He's survived the dot-com crash to turn into a Thanksgiving balloon, and now gets fired unceremoniously? For what? According to the BBC, annoying Barry Diller. Of course, last March Ask.com, owned by IAC boss Diller, purchased the Jeeves site for a cool couple of billion. Ever since then Diller seems to have had the balding man in his sights. And now that the great word of "branding" has been handed down from on high, Jeeves no longer fits in the Ask.com's universe. Does this make a difference? Not really, although reportedly there was a brief effort to save the character... It still won't improve the search results from Ask.com, which aren't bad, but they could be better. So in rememberance of Jeeves, here's a link to the only decent interview he's ever given.

Tags: ask.com, barry diller, BarryDiller, jeeves, news