After ten years of loyal service, Jeeves has retired from the search engine Ask Jeeves, as bizarre as the concept might seem. Ask Jeeves has now rebranded as the utterly forgettable Ask.

But then, as bizarre as the idea of the eponymous character being dissociated from his own search engine appears, it’s certainly no more bizarre than the initial decision to associate a seventy-nine year-old Wodehouse character with a site claiming to be at the forefront of cutting-edge technology. Having said that, the strategy was remarkably successful, with the site gaining far more popularity than the (woeful) quality of its search results ever deserved.

As for the new-look Ask.com: It has a very clean interface, which appears to be largely based on Google’s (as almost every search engine is nowadays – the only innovations appear to be in sites like a9.com). Frankly, it’s so samey as to beg the question: Why bother?