The AskJeeves butler returns from the dead - in the UK

Remember Ask Jeeves? Before Google took over the world, it was one of a number of scrappy search engines competing with Yahoo!, AltaVista, Lycos, and Hotbot for your attention. And then about 3 years ago the Jeeves character was retired and the site was rebranded Ask.com.

But it turns out that even after three years Ask Jeeves still has better name recognition in the UK than Ask.com. So the UK team brushed up the butler character, remodeled him in 3D and transformed the UK version of the site into Ask Jeeves once again.

The UK Ask team will also be making a major advertising push using the Ask Jeeves name and logo. Apparently research shows that Americans aren't as keen on Jeeves, and there are no plans to bring the character back. But if you do type www.askjeeves.com into your browser instead of ask.com, you will see the old cartoon version of Jeeves on the search engine.

Tags: ask, ask-jeeves