The key to getting more Windows users to switch to Linux | Hardware 2.0 | ZDNet.com

[Jon Pruente]

On 6/23/07, Oren Beck <orenbeck at gmail.com> wrote:
> IIRC "Ask" is the current incarnation of what used to be called "Jeeves"
> A naming that was intentionally evocative of an olde English butler.
> With cartoonish theming carrying the meme a bit to extreme for many users.
> The focus difference with "Jeeves" being that conversational queries were
> handled more gracefully than other search engines of that time could. With
> the results often being either very much spot on or weirdly way off. I used
> it for "game show" questions or soft searches like " how many cover versions
> of the Johnny Cash  song  "ring of fire" are there ?
>
> Oren


That is the short of it.  I just checked up on a few things and it was
an Ask Jeeves co-founder that was on the board of Kozoru, and
subsequently bought and moved the tech and the (unsold) servers and
hardware to Cali.  It seems that the Kozoru technology AIM-based BYOMS
bot was working a few weeks ago, but it may be offline again now.

Jon.