#SearchEngines #WebSearch #AskJeeves #SiteDeath

'Ask.com, originally founded as the Y2K stalwart Ask Jeeves, is officially dead.'

https://mashable.com/article/ask-jeeves-shut-down

Associated Press: Eulogy for the CIA Factbook: The free standard for world facts, long an educational staple, is gone. “Its authors — some of the world’s best intelligence-gatherers, who contributed thousands of their own photos — kept the curated database updated and online for public use at no charge.”

Gizmodo: VR Just Took Another Massive Body Blow. “This week, Rec Room, a popular VR meeting place and metaverse of sorts, announced that it would be shutting down on June 1. The reason? Business, of course.”

Hong Kong Free Press: Yahoo Hong Kong to begin ‘phased wind-down’ of news business in April. “Yahoo Hong Kong’s pivot to original content in 2021 allowed the company to fill a gap left behind by independent outlets Apple Daily and Stand News, which shut down that year in the wake of the Beijing-imposed national security law.”

Hold the Front Page: Labour u-turns on court archive deletion. “A move to permanently delete five years of court records from a widely-used journalism resource has been halted after a government u-turn. As previously reported on HTFP, HM Courts and Tribunal service had ordered the deletion of the Courtsdesk archive, an online tool which helped reporters search through magistrates’ court lists […]

Arkansas Times: New group aims to keep PBS programming in Arkansas. “Friends of Arkansas PBS, a newly formed, citizen-led group that hopes to preserve programming from the national Public Broadcasting Service in Arkansas, is hosting its first talk on Thursday. Former Arkansas First Ladies Barbara Pryor and Gay White will serve as honorary co-chairs and are urging people to join, according to a […]

Legal Cheek: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK’s largest court reporting database. “Courtsdesk will reportedly be deleted within days after HM Courts & Tribunals Service ordered every record wiped. The platform had been used by more than 1,500 reporters from 39 media outlets to search magistrates’ court lists and registers, but the move has triggered warnings that important […]

Spotted in my email alerts, I think: AppSumo Graveyard. “Inspired by Google Graveyard. We track every AppSumo product that shut down, pivoted, or abandoned its LTD users.” Not much here yet, looks like it just launched.

Lifehacker: Google Shut Down Its Dark Web Monitoring Tool, so Here’s What to Use Instead. “In other words, instead of flagging when your account credentials appear in a data breach, Google wants to make sure that your accounts stay safe even if a breach has occurred. There are reasons why you should be keeping an eye on dark web chatter, however—and there are tools to take over the monitoring […]

CIA: Spotlighting The World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell. “One of CIA’s oldest and most recognizable intelligence publications, The World Factbook, has sunset. The World Factbook served the Intelligence Community and the general public as a longstanding, one-stop basic reference about countries and communities around the globe.” I am very upset and hope someone comes to the rescue.