Fancy Store-Bought Dirt

Can I Skip The Ads And Cut A Check Instead?

From Scott Monty (yes, I do read my blogroll when I get a chance) comes word of a special charitable promotion over at Ask Jeeves. You can play along if you're feeling generous (in more ways than one), or you can indulge me as I explain to you my pathological hatred of both Ask Jeeves and this type of promotion.

First: Ask Jeeves. It's a simple choice I guess -- you can either do your web searches at the site that, by general consensus, gives you the best results and the fastest search times. Or you can go to the one with the user interface designed around a butler. After all, who needs a superior product when you have a butler?

Don't get me wrong, this isn't an argument against attempts at style. One of my favorite writers just published a book about how aesthetics are playing ever more of a role in consumer choices. Two problems with this:

1. Style generally can't overcome a strictly inferior product.

2. Note that I said "attempt at" style. The ask.com butler just doesn't work for me.

So that's everything I hate about the Jeeves part (and I could have actually just written one word instead: Clippy), without even getting to what's obnoxious about phrasing your queries in the form of a question. Maybe humans deal with questions better, but for computer search algorithms the idea of a question structure is needless complication. And given that I don't think of things in question form myself (I rarely have a specific question, rather just want background material on a topic), it seems weird to put both me and the computer on unfamiliar turf.

And finally... stipulating at this point that Ask Jeves is in inferior product (maybe it isn't; maybe you don't believe me - but if it isn't, then why were you already using Google, other than either herd instinct or "they're all the same" arbitrariness?), why would you use an inferior product just based on claims that some percentage of their profit will go to charity? Screw the middleman: Both you and your charitable destination are a lot better off if you stick with the most cost-effective goods and services, make a quick estimate of the dollar figure that matches how much better off you are, and donate a little less than that.

Of course, if search engines really are that interchangeable to you, then you quit reading this post three paragraphs ago.

(And another thing: Why the rigamarole of having a parallel site? Surely the idea isn't that there would be people who so object to hurricane relief that they'd rather just keep using the old site and letting Ask.com keep 100% of its profits. No, by setting up the parallel site, they make sure that even their faithful users won't accidentally cut into their profits.)

Now Ask.com is in Emeryville, as am I. Many of their employees probably eat at that same Public Market food court. Would I be out of line buttonholing one of them at random and telling them in person everything that sucks about their company? I presume so, but wouldnt it be sorely tempting?

Posted by Matt Bruce at September 22, 2004 10:27 AM