Ask.com -- Not the world's first ever "Decision Engine"

So, earlier in this here blog, you heard me extol Reference with kudos abounding, a decision I now question fully. It is not that I doubt the excellence of Reference and its wondrously helpful subdomains, I only ponder how such a jewel could descend from such a...lemon. As promised, I searched for answers to my confusion at ask.com, the parent site of Reference. Below is a screenshot of the horrors I found...


Now, the first thing you undoubtedly noticed in this picture was the change in "Jeeves". I'll be completely honest with you; I am like the rest of the world (in the sense that I use Google, of course, what am I, a hippie?), and as such I have absolutely no idea when this new virtual "Jeeves" was created. One thing I do know; however, is that I don't like it one bit, but I digress. Despite this atrocious change in graphical formatting, I implore you to focus on the search query box and to ask yourself, "What is wrong here?"

Well, I'll tell you what's wrong, the autocomplete box is what's wrong. I typed in "what should I blog about" and what is immediately returned to me? "No Search Suggestions Found"

Are you taking this all in?

Even ask.com, a search engine, the backbone of our internetical society, cannot give me the answer to the question I put through the wringer. You must be thinking to yourself, "Keaton, this must be where your journey ends! It must! If the search engines have failed you, there is no way you could possibly go on!"

No says I.

You see, the first webpage returned to me from that once-thought-failed search at ask.com (which, by the way, doesn't have an ''I'm Feeling Lucky" button, so I had to actually do this labor manually) was titled "What Should You Blog About?" Now, you'll have to come back for my next post to see just exactly what content this site contained, but here's a little sneak peak for you...

Oh yes. This looks promising.