Ask Jeeves wasn’t an actual person though
Comment on Before Smartphones, an Army of Real People Helped You Find Stuff on Google
IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Ask Jeeves was doing this before Google existed…
jeffw@lemmy.world 7 months ago
IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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.
Fredselfish@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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.
erwan@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
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.
Fredselfish@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Not talking about that one. The article mention multiple different types of platforms.