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Why MapQuest, Jeeves, and Other 'Internet Zombies' are Still Around (nytimes.com) 49

"The dream of the 1990s internet is still alive, if you look in the right corners," argues the New York Times' newsletter On Tech: More than 17 million Americans regularly use MapQuest, one of the first digital mapping websites that was long ago overtaken by Google and Apple, according to data from the research firm Comscore. The dot-com-era internet portal Go.com shut down 20 years ago, but its ghost lives on in the "Go" that's part of web addresses for some Disney sites.

Ask Jeeves, a web search engine that started before Google, still has fans and people typing "Ask Jeeves a question" into Google searches.

Maybe you scoff at AOL, but it is still the 50th most popular website in the U.S., according to figures from SimilarWeb. The early 2000s virtual world Second Life never went away and is now having a second life as a proto-metaverse brand....

There is something heartwarming about pioneers that shaped the early internet, lost their cool and dominance, and eventually carved out a niche. They'll never be as popular or powerful as they were a generation ago, but musty internet brands might still have a fruitful purpose. These brands have managed to stay alive through a combination of inertia, nostalgia, the fact they've produced a product that people like, digital moneymaking prowess and oddities of the rickety internet.

If today's internet powers like Facebook and Pinterest lose relevance, too, they could stick around for decades.

The article quotes Bloomberg Opinion columnist Ben Schott calling the older sites "almost cockroach brands. They're small enough and resilient enough that they can't be killed."
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Why MapQuest, Jeeves, and Other 'Internet Zombies' are Still Around

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    The headline promises to answer a question, and the summary doesn't.

    It waffles about heartwarming nineties but that doesn't explain a thing. And it doesn't invite reading the rest of the waffling either.

  • I for one... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ls671 ( 1122017 ) on Sunday June 26, 2022 @02:47AM (#62651312) Homepage

    If all what is said in TFS is true, I for one would welcome our new/ancient Internet overlords!

    I'll give it a try to search specific technical terms related to a problem tomorrow while at work. Google has become pretty useless for that.

    Who knows? If it works as good as Lycos back then, it should work amazingly well.

    Hey, I just checked and lycos is still on-line as well.

    P.S. I am perfectly aware that the quantity of data now available on-line has augmented exponentially, but still Google; I don't care what is popular and what other peoples search for, could you begin with first at least matching my keyworks in the search results that you provide?

    Thank you!

    • by Junta ( 36770 )

      The problem of net search usefulness is that if you have an easy problem, it'll come up. If you have some tricky problem, any potential solution is buried under a sea of easy problems that have similar symptoms. If you are lucky, there's enough particular detail in your problem that distinguishes it from the easy problems to weed them out.

      The problem is just the volume of everything, including the problems, has grown so much that the available data skews towards the more common problems people have. As t

    • Google; I don't care what is popular and what other peoples search for, could you begin with first at least matching my keyworks in the search results that you provide?

      Thank you!

      They will happily start doing that in exchange for you searching for "which of your advertisers should I give money to right now?"

      As long as you continue to search for things not relevant to their advertisers, they will continue to give you results not relevant to your search.

      Google: "We have placed your results where you must scroll down. Pray we do not place them where you must scroll down further."

    • by k6mfw ( 1182893 )

      I'll give it a try to search specific technical terms related to a problem tomorrow while at work. Google has become pretty useless for that.

      Got me thinking of using other search engines as searching for techie stuff, Google returns bunch of sales and marketing crap.

  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday June 26, 2022 @02:50AM (#62651318)

    of the pre-big data, pre-invasive ubiquitous corporate surveillance, pre-cloud, pre-SaaS internet. They were shit sites even then, but I miss them because they come from a time that was still somewhat innocent.

  • hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bhcompy ( 1877290 ) on Sunday June 26, 2022 @03:03AM (#62651322)

    There is something heartwarming about pioneers that shaped the early internet, lost their cool and dominance, and eventually carved out a niche. They'll never be as popular or powerful as they were a generation ago, but musty internet brands might still have a fruitful purpose.

    *Slashdot nods sagely*

    • by TWX ( 665546 )

      Exactly.

      Thi site is just as guilty of being a dinosaur clinging-on as anything cited in that article. If anything this site is worse, because the various owners' attempts over time to change its purpose only to fail, but to shrink its userbase with each iteration, make this place more niche every time around.

      I still use some websites from the early days of the commercial Internet, probably because they're not so popular as to make discussion more like trying to shout into a hurricane. I'm fine with a smal

  • by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Sunday June 26, 2022 @03:38AM (#62651348) Homepage

    altavista.com redirects to Yahoo
    hotbot.com has been rebirthed as a VPN provider
    dogpile.com seems to still be a metasearch engine

    I just checked and my ISP shutdown its NNTP server years ago

  • by test321 ( 8891681 ) on Sunday June 26, 2022 @04:15AM (#62651368)

    Since the question is not answered, here it is: Ask Jeeves is still there because the market is huge and having a tiny fraction is enough for a living. Ask Jeeves has 0.72% market share and hires 35 staff. For comparison DuckDuckGo has 0.85% market share and 82 employees.

    What the question seems to imply as an attitude annoys me quite a lot. There is a sort of judgement for using certain places of businesses that fell out of their better years. This crowd judgement effect is very childish at its core. Think of young teenagers who can get mocked at school for not using the same big clothing brands as everyone or not liking the same music as everyone, and for whatever reason preferring something in fashion 20 years ago in their parents' young years.

    Source (Ask Jeeves): https://www.oberlo.com/blog/to... [oberlo.com] https://bearsofficialsstore.co... [bearsofficialsstore.com]
    Source (DuckDuckGo) https://backlinko.com/duckduck... [backlinko.com] https://www.zoominfo.com/pic/d... [zoominfo.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      > What the question seems to imply as an attitude annoys me quite a lot

      It's a Marxist presupposition that Google and Apple ought to be all the maps anybody need.

      Like Bernie famously said, "why do we need so many different kinds of deodorant?"

      These people never matured beyond 7th Grade.

      Actual students of economics are never surprised by the Long Tail in a sufficiently large market. Students of Menger know that all value is subjective.

      For the curious there are many long-tail econ websites out there. mises.

      • I'm not overly familiar with the tenants of Marxism, but I don't think it is predicated on contentment with a duopoly of two of the largest corporations that ever existed. I think the Austrian fetish is why a lot of Libertarians fell so hard for crypto, they thought: "all value is subjective" therefore "pure sentiment equals pure undilutable buying power, capturing all energy inputs in a dynamic stasis battery to channel economic potential away from the chaos harpies." I know it sounds ridiculous, but an a
    • Since the question is not answered, here it is: Ask Jeeves is still there because the market is huge and having a tiny fraction is enough for a living. Ask Jeeves has 0.72% market share and hires 35 staff. For comparison DuckDuckGo has 0.85% market share and 82 employees.

      What the question seems to imply as an attitude annoys me quite a lot. There is a sort of judgement for using certain places of businesses that fell out of their better years. This crowd judgement effect is very childish at its core.

      For me, a bigger question is why did companies who pioneered concepts fail while others hit it big? Is it better to be a fast follower and improve on the original idea rather than create a new one?

      • by test321 ( 8891681 ) on Sunday June 26, 2022 @09:48AM (#62651816)

        why did companies who pioneered concepts fail while others hit it big?

        Volatility of online business. It cost nothing to change from Ask Jeeves to Google to something else, so a fashion can have dramatic effects that is a typical feature of online and does not happen in the physical economy (we continue to go to the same physical shops because of their location e.g. close to home, even when the customer experience is not the best).

        Is it better to be a fast follower and improve on the original idea

        It's better to have loads of cash, such that you flood the market. Mappy was available in Europe in 1987 on BBS telescreens and is still available as a free app (OSM data for the maps plus their own streetview pictures). It does the job. Just it's not a behemoth with billions in capital.

        But I'm not of the opinion they failed. These companies are in business for 25+ years and the product Works Just Fine. It's more the behemoths which are an abnormality in my view. Why would you need 10,000 people to develop a search engine or a city map? What sort of evil monetization tricks have you used and abused so that you can pay so many people out of a search engine?

    • There is a sort of judgement for using certain places of businesses that fell out of their better years. This crowd judgement effect is very childish at its core.

      There's nothing childish about judging someone for using an inferior tool when the superior tool costs nothing, especially since their arguments for doing so are usually stupid and generally boil down to "I'm scared of change."

      • It's not about inferior/superior. We are talking of software where there are plenty of free desktop tools, mobile applications, websites, that fulfil the need. You have to choose one, and it's not always about "superior", just the one that's the right tool for you. "The one I'm used to" is just valid reason as any other. Many people don't want to spend time learning new tools all the time. You can call it "scare of change" but it's one major effect and mocking it will not make it go away. Also yes, mocking

        • It's not about inferior/superior. We are talking of software where there are plenty of free desktop tools, mobile applications, websites, that fulfil the need. You have to choose one, and it's not always about "superior", just the one that's the right tool for you.

          No sir, it is about superior. It's about which tool does the job better. If you have to adapt your workflow to use a better tool, then you have to consider whether it makes sense or not. But if the tool is subjectively better enough, then it becomes worth it. And most of these services are unpopular because they are inferior, not just because something else is newer. Jeeves is living in a refrigerator box now because Google does the same job, only better.

          • I disagree google maps is superior for mapping. The several I have tried right now for this conversation (mapquest, mappy, viamichelin) all have much better balanced color scales. google maps is either too bland and unreadable, and suddenly too crowded when you zoom. One cannot say "superior" as there is a matter of taste. If you're old enough to have used paper maps, ViaMichelin is the cleanest. google is the go-to solution because people don't test mapping applications anymore, they use what comes with th

          • For search results, I can see why people used to getting a certain kind of search result prefer the devil they know—nobody is trying to game the AskJeeves algorithm. So when you say that you judge people for these preferences, I wonder what the basis of scorn is. When Henry Ford asked what people want, and they replied "faster horses," they were demonstrating that Henry Ford's vision of transportation was superior to theirs. But in 2022, if someone is saying that they want faster horses, it is more
      • Nah. According to your thought process, everyone should drive the same vehicle. Whichever one is the absolute best at what it does and all the others should die on the vine. Then you use a scarecrow argument (because they're afraid of change) which is an argument you made up in your head. You have zero idea why people use the tools they use and so you made up on that is condescending. Perhaps because it makes you feel superior? I don't know. Regardless, your reasoning is not well thought out and you come of
    • Ask Jeeves has 0.72% market share and hires 35 staff.

      Which begs the question: are they all named Jeeves?

  • ...at Zombocom! [zombo.com]

    =Smidge=

  • Not so surprising (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Handpaper ( 566373 ) on Sunday June 26, 2022 @05:40AM (#62651450)
    I mean, we're still here, too.
    • "I mean, we're still here, too."

      Sure, but with the current state of Google, nobody will ever find you.

  • from my search providers. And I still think, yea I will Google it.
    • from my search providers. And I still think, yea I will Google it.

      I wonder if in like 30 years or something, we will still talk about "googling" something we want to look up, assuming Google dies off by then.
      And of course the youngsters will all laugh at us like I did when my parents talked about the Davenport in the family room.

      • by Etcetera ( 14711 )

        from my search providers. And I still think, yea I will Google it.

        I wonder if in like 30 years or something, we will still talk about "googling" something we want to look up, assuming Google dies off by then.

        And of course the youngsters will all laugh at us like I did when my parents talked about the Davenport in the family room.

        Probably. Genericized trademarks seem to stick around a lot, even if the courts don't always agree that they are. I still use Xerox every once in a while even though I can't remember the last time I used a real Xerox photocopier... and people know what I mean.

      • We had a non-Davenport davenport and a divan in our living room, but failed to acknowledge the pachyderm. Grandparent visits brought coal oil and antimacassars.
  • Given that we've seen brand zombification since well before recent web companies(eg. Kodak or RCA's butchery for the parts anyone still wanted, followed by grim afterlife smeared on random consumer goods), and given that the fixed costs of operating a website that's largely coasting aren't particularly high(especially if it has become a subsidiary of some flavor and no longer has its own office space and management layer to pay for), it seems like a real waste to ask "Hey, why are these outfits that you actually remember still around?" When talking about entities well-known enough that you'd bother writing a general-interest article about them the default assumption should be that they still exist in some form, even if it's just as a skin for bing or a veneer of respectability for some affiliate marketing bullshit.

    The more interesting questions only come up if you look at exceptions to the 'start coasting, live indefinitely' mode: if something with a still-recognizable brand is so dead that it it's not even being used as a cheap coat of paint for unrelated activity that suggests a story; and if something you assumed was just coasting on life support is actually quite active in a niche you were unware of that's also of potential interest.
  • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Sunday June 26, 2022 @07:56AM (#62651604) Journal
    ... it's weird that there are smaller market players, and that any competition still exists? Okay ...
  • The early 2000s virtual world Second Life never went away and is now having a second life as a proto-metaverse brand....

    I'm not sure there was anything 'proto' about it, it's not as if something isn't 'actually' real until Facebook has pooped out their much, much creepier version of it.

  • by radarskiy ( 2874255 ) on Sunday June 26, 2022 @12:05PM (#62652080)

    Choosing between alternatives carries a cost in itself. That cost increases with increasing number of alternatives and with decreasing differentiation between alternatives. If the cost of optimizing your choice is more than the gain you could achieve from that optimization, it is in fact efficient to stick with a less efficient choice.

  • Mapquest has a decent traveling-salesman approximation.

  • Does goatse.cx count as one of these?

  • I made stuff in the 90s that's still in ActiveWorlds. Cool to go look at it once in a while.
  • AOL's email system, once the largest and arguably the most resilient in the world, now runs on Yahoo's Rocketmail platform.

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