Ask Jeeves Final

Ask Jeeves is a search engine who’s mission is to simplify people's lives by supplying fast access to answers, and to enable companies to better acquire, retain and maximize the lifetime value of their customers. The company was incorporated in June of 1996, in Berkeley California by computer scientist David Warthen and venture capitalist Garrett Gruener. Ask Jeeves officially went online in 1997, and within a few months, the company received a $5.5 million dollar cash infusion from the venture capitalist Roda Group.

In March 1998, the company launched Ask Jeeves for Kids, a fun and child-friendly version of the original Ask Jeeves that screens out inappropriate materials. The company's Corporate Question Answering Service licensing program attracted big-name clients such as Dell Computer, which used Ask Jeeves' technology to create Ask Dudley. Ask Dudley helps users find their way around Dell's customer support site. In the late 1998, Ask Jeeves licensed its plain language technology to Compaq's AltaVista search engine.

In 1999, Ask Jeeves went public and received a $25 million dollar investment, primarily from Highland Capital Partners and Institutional Venture Partners. Later that year, the company’s international unit began developing its first country-specific version of its web site, Ask Jeeves U.K., which launched in March 2000. Later that same year, the company acquired Net Effects Systems, a live web-based help service.

Ask Jeeves acquired Direct Hit Technologies in 2000, which provides popularity-based search results, The Evergreen Project, a web-based provider of educational content and launched a line of Ask Jeeves books. After operation losses in 2000, Robert Wrubel was forced to step down as CEO, but stayed with the company and is currently the Executive Vice President of Market Development. Also during that time the company reduce its workforce by 25 percent.

Currently, Ask Jeeves, in a joint venture with Univision, is planning to launch Ask Jeeves en Espanol, a Spanish-language version of its search engine. Almost 12 million users access Ask Jeeves each month.

The Corporate Services Group had 60 total customers for the year ended December 31, 1999, including customers in its targeted vertical markets of technology, financial services, telecommunications, e-tailing and healthcare. The Web Properties and Syndication Group had 520 customers for the year ended December 31, 1999.

2. Vision

Ask Jeeves’ goal is to combine the strengths of natural-language parsing software, data mining process, knowledge-base creation and maintenance tools with the cognitive strengths and capabilities of human editors. Ask Jeeves, named after the helpful butler in P.G. Wodehouse novels, breaks down questions by grammar and word meaning and fits them into templates.

3. Global Brand Power

Ask Jeeves International has formed its first country specific joint venture, in its recent joint venture with Carlton Communications Plc and Granada Media Group, the two largest commercial television companies in the United Kingdom, to creating Ask Jeeves UK. Ask Jeeves UK focused on users in Britain and the Republic of Ireland, has just launched a service designed to meet their specific needs and interests. As a result of its merger with Direct Hit Technologies, the Ask Jeeves has acquired customer relationships with Catcha.com (Asia), UKMax.com (UK), Punto (Italy) and Scandinavia Online (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) international Internet portals.

4. Positioning

4.1. Traditional offline medias VS Online search engines.

Traditional offline media, such as journals, encyclopedia, consist of scholars’ research results, clear definitions, and well-defined contents. These are usually hardcopy books and literature requiring a great deal of storage space. Because traditional medias are typically expensive, most people do not purchase them to keep references in the home; instead, they go to the library or other facility on an as-need basis.

Doing research by using traditional offline media is a time consuming task. Information has to be found by figuring out the category, finding the index number, looking for the books, and finally checking if the information is what was desired in the first place. If the books contain the information needed, search process was successful; otherwise, the search process is repeated until the information is found. Traditional offline media research methods require a great deal of human effort.

However, traditional offline medias typically contain more complete information and reliable information. Nowadays, the offline medias are still very popular, and are the only resource method accepted by people in certain circumstances.

Online search engines, as we all know, link to billions of web pages, and have a significant impact on people in this information age. Search engines allow people to do research or find information by typing in keywords and returning or linking directly to web sites (pages) related to the keywords.

Online search engines make it possible for people to stay at home and find thousands of web pages consisting of information they are interested in, by using only their PCs. This type of research method saves a lot of time, and needs a lot less human effort, compared to the traditional offline research method. Thus, it is becoming increasingly popular today.

Because the web is accessible to everyone for both information gathering and posting, the information online search engines find can be, and often is, much less reliable than traditional offline medias. For example, anyone can publish an article on the web and sign a name Dr. Martin, which looks like an academic article, but in actuality, the contents could be poor or contain flawed information. In this case, online search engines will still find it, because they only look for keywords. Also, the web contains so many web pages (over 4 billion at last count), that when doing research by using search engines, the results usually consist of too much redundant information (provides the same web sites, articles, etc. multiple times in a single search), which is serious drawback of online search engines in general.

4.2. Traditional search engines V.S. Ask Jeeves

Traditional search engines, such as Hotbot, Excite, Alta Vista, match keywords in a users’ request to an index of words derived by cataloging almost every word found on the Internet. These sites return many page hits leaving it up to users to surf the sites and refine the search until the desired information is found. This can be a long and frustrating process. Yahoo!, in contrast, is a comprehensive categorized directory of sites that allows users to find all sites of a certain type, searching through multiple sites to find what they need.

With Ask Jeeves, unlike other search engines, users type a question in plain English and Ask Jeeves presents a list of matched questions. The user selects the closest match and Ask Jeeves moves the browser directly to the site that was selected by the Ask Jeeves research staff as being an appropriate answer to the question. However, some users complain that the system sometimes misses some desirable answers.

5. Market Analysis Encompassing Barriers to Entry and Exit

5.1. Barriers to Entry and exit

Ask Jeeves has many competitors, Yahoo!, Google, Northern Light, to name a few. So how have they survived, you may ask? “By being the leading provider of intuitive, intelligent web interaction solutions delivering a humanized online experience.” Establishing themselves as the leading provider of natural language navigation solutions, they developed a brand name and a user interface that communicate on an almost human level. New entrants in this market failed to compete with the first mover position Ask Jeeves has established for itself. In order to safeguard the risks they face, Ask Jeeves needed to maintain and enhance their brand, expand their product service offering, increase the amount of traffic to Ask.com and DirectHit.com, increase the values of their online personal services and increase the types of businesses that use their online personal services structure.

Ask Jeeves has, since its introduction in 1997 established alliances and partnerships with large and very established players such as AltaVista and Verizon. It delivers critical customer-driven information to corporations such as DaimlerChrysler, Dell (Ask Dudley), Ford Motor Company, Network Appliance, Nextel and Radio Shack (See Appendix A – Ask Jeeves Customers). All these companies use Ask Jeeves Business Solutions, this once again show its valuable alliances. It has also recently pre announced its contract with the State of Washington. Ask Jeeves will help the government build long-term relationships with the residents, and in so doing, will build theses relationships for themselves. This very profitable move has put Ask Jeeves in a position for further growth and profitability.

5.2. Product

Ask Jeeves as a product “emphasizes ease of use, relevance, precision and ability to learn.” Initially, Ask Jeeves had divided their market into two segments, the individual user and companies wanting to target and acquire customers. It has since launched customized services for Corporate web sites. Moreover, they have acquired Net Effect Systems Inc a provider of a live help service enabling real-time, text-based communications between a company and its online customers. In addition, they acquired Direct Hit Technologies Inc. This company aggregates and organizes online content making the users search for information, products and services, more relevant, accurate and faster. According to their quarterly report, Direct Hit stated, “We believe the development of additional features and tools are vital for us to remain competitive in our industry.” Another product line extension was the introduction of Ask Jeeves for Kids, a fun, child-friendly version of the original that allows children to use the same natural language approach. Its latest extension is the launching of www.AskJeeves.uk, in the United Kingdom, in March 2000. Today not only do they boast products such as, Jeeves Relevant Answers, Jeeves Advisor and Jeeves Insight, but they keep ahead of the rest by keeping ahead of themselves and continuously improving themselves and their technology, “Ask Jeeves' knowledge-bases learn from every single user interaction, growing smarter every day.”

5.3. Price

Ask Jeeves delivers its services through its web Properties, Syndication Group and Corporate Services Group. Its revenues are derived from these three corporate components and their service product is priced as follows:

Advertising Revenues, are derived from short-term advertising contracts, over a specified time period for a fixed fee. Fixed fee method is used because they do not guarantee the advertisement’s effectiveness.

Syndicate fees consist of a fixed fee that is recognized according to a monthly accrual rate (contract months used per fiscal year) over the contractual term of twelve months. As of March 31, 2000 there are a total of 30 syndication relationships.
Electronic Commerce Transaction fee is generated when a user clicks on the answer linking to an electronic commerce merchant’s web site on a cost per click basis.
Corporate Services has a clientele of almost 110 corporate customers (see Appendix A – Ask Jeeves Customers for a partial list). Ask Jeeves is targeting accounts in vertical markets of e-tailing, financial services, technology and healthcare.

5.4. Promotion and Distribution

Ask.com started the Ask Jeeves promotional campaign by launching In April 1997, the first of its advertiser-supported public web sites. In 1998, it decided to move into another market segment i.e. children and launched Ask Jeeves for Kids.

Ask Jeeves spread not only through word of mouth but also through advertising online through its alliances and promoting its “butler” service image through various media television and magazine ad campaigns. It offers various business solutions and acts as a marketing tool. Ask Jeeves distributes it product through complementary promotions, offering such services, for example, as AltaVista, enticing the AltaVista, business searcher or individual user to find out more by just asking Ask Jeeves.

With a human oriented approach like this one, in a very two dimensional market the internet has forced upon users, Ask Jeeves is providing the user with something more three dimensional, more real life and more comfortable. It communicates the feeling of trust, just as one would feel talking or asking a physical person. With this kind of approach, the course for the future looks promising.

6. Competitive Analysis

6.1. Key Competitors:

Ask Jeeves.com allows users to use plain English (English speaking version) to search for information. If the information is not found, it directs you to matching web pages from other search engines. To do this, Ask Jeeves has several strategic alliances (See Appendix B – Ask Jeeves Partnerships).

Assessing Ask Jeeves competition is difficult, as their product/service offering is unique. Depending on the source of research, Ask Jeeves has anywhere from 12-23 direct competitors (See Appendix C – Ask Jeeves Competitors). For the purposes of this study, the following search engines were chosen as direct competitors: Yahoo!, Excite, LookSmart, as they were the competitors consistently listed in the research.

Key Performance Metrics/Scores

Search Engine	*Searchability Score	**Global Rank	***U.S. Rank	****Top 20 Search Engine Score	*****Audience per Month
Ask Jeeves	A	16	19	2	12%
Excite	B-	5	5	3	16%
LookSmart	D-	18	15	2	14%
Yahoo!	B-	2	3	3	61%

*Searchability – Test given by search engine evaluators to determine how well search engines perform finding a specific item. **Global Rank – Ranking per month of number of users visiting the site globally. ***U.S. Rank – Ranking per month of number of users visiting the site from the U.S. ****Top 20 Search Engine Score – Rank of the top 20 U.S. search Engines. (1-Poor, 5-Excellent) *****Audience per Month – Number of visitors per site of available visitors per month. Does not account for repeat visitors (results may be greater than 100%).

Excite is a popular search engine on the Web. It was launched in 1995 and bought two of its prominent competitors; Magellan and WebCrawler in 1996. WebCrawler is still a stand-alone search engine, but is now considered a lighter version of Excite.

LookSmart is another human-based compilation of web sites. LookSmart also provides search results for MSN Search, and Excite. Inktomi provides extended search results to LookSmart. LookSmart was launched in late 1996, originally backed by Reader’s Digest. Company executives bought back control a year later.

Yahoo! is the most popular web search engine/service both in the U.S. and globally. It is the engine, on the Web using human-compiled sites and pages. It has over a million sites listed and supplements its human results with those from Google. Yahoo! entered into an agreement with Google to provide extended search results (search results not found within the initial search base), in February 2001. Yahoo! was launched in late 1994 and is the oldest major web site directory.

6.2. Engine to Engine Comparisons

Ask Jeeves

Main results powered by own database, some from direct Hit Meta, Alta Vista, Excite and WebCrawler. Ask Jeeves deploys its solutions on Ask Jeeves at Ask.com, Ask Jeeves for Kids at AJKids.com and DirectHit.com, to assist companies target and acquire qualified prospects online and to provide consumers with real-time access to information, products and services.

Yahoo!

Main results are powered by own database and secondary results powered by Google. Yahoo! will link with Google’s search engine when it cannot find what users are looking for internally. Then a list of categories that match the search-words will be created, followed by web pages from Google.

Excite

Main results are powered by own database and some results from LookSmart. Powers main results at Excite-owned Magellan and Excite-owned WebCrawler

LookSmart

Main results powered by own database. Secondary results powered by Inktomi. Powers main results at MSN Search, some results at AltaVista, Excite, and iWon.

6.3. Strengths & Weaknesses of Competitors:

Search Engine

Strengths

Weaknesses

Ask Jeeves

·                            Good for simple questions

·                            Answers from evaluated sites

·                            Searches Alta Vista, Excite & WebCrawler

·                            Results can be slow even on the fastest machines

·                            Results can be less than optimal

Excite

·                            Large database

·                            Simple English search terms

·                            Has own web site reviews

·                            Concept Searching

·                            Quick results

·                            Unsophisticated interface

·                            Less success with broad queries

·                            limited field-searching capabilities

LookSmart

·                            Directory > 1 million links

·                            Updated everyday

·                            LookSmart sponsors are listed first

·                            Includes faux results

·                            URLs aren't displayed

·                            No way to exclude terms from a search.

·                            Boolean operators don't work

·                            No advanced search option exists

Yahoo!

·                            Easy to use

·                            Can report dead links

·                            Indexed by categories

·                            Good for general use

·                            2 million + web pages

·                            Doesn’t prioritize results

·                            Requires a lot of user filtering

6.4. Competitive Situation

Ask Jeeves is no different from any other dot com company in the year 2001, a great deal of money going out and precious little coming in. Ask Jeeves has partnered, in some way or another, with at least half of its so-called competitors. They in-turn have partnered with theirs, making true competitive analysis difficult.

At the end of 2000 and beginning of 2001 there are no less than 1,400 search engines globally. All of these search engines are broadly categorized into multi-search engines, simple or general search engines, search engine portals, portals, meta-search engines, etc.

Ask Jeeves places 16^th in the top 50 U.S. web sites and 19^th globally. Excite, LookSmart and Yahoo! all placed higher. This rating is actually deceptive, as these competitors are considered to be more robust search engines. While Yahoo!, Excite and LookSmart tend to be user friendly, they are more accurate and intense in the number and types of web sites and pages returned.

The tendency of new search engines is to be bigger and faster, have an easily understood interface and let the user decide when enough is enough. Enter Google. Google is the latest upstart to enter the search engine market. It has zoomed to the number one spot in less than two and a half years, based on ease of use, number of returns, and bare necessities of design. In this case, less is more. Many of the less graphically intensive search engines are enjoying more use.

Ask Jeeves is a major player in its niche market and serves its users well. It appeals to youngsters and less technically oriented adults. It is wildly popular in Europe and is expanding into Spain and other European countries in a fairly aggressive manner.

7. Financial Analysis

The revenues in Ask Jeeves’ Income Statement (see Appendix D – Ask Jeeves Income Statement), for the fiscal year ended 12/30/2000, was $95.7 million, up from $22 million for the fiscal year ended 12/30/1999. The revenues consist primarily of advertising revenues, syndication fees and electronic commerce transaction fees. The increase revenues resulted from higher advertising sales of increased consumer internet usage. Net loss totaled $189.6 million, up from $52.9 million for the same period, resulting from increased amortization of assets acquired from Lumina Design Systems, Inc.

From the Balance sheet (see Appendix E – Ask Jeeves Income Statement) during 12/31/99 to 12/31/2000, total assets increase from $76.2 million to $537.9 million, due to an increase in cash, accounts receivable, property and equipment. At year 2000 fiscal year end, both return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) showed a negative of 38.15% and 43.15%, respectively. On the other hand, Ask Jeeves shows strong financial strength with a current ratio of 1.97 with cash of $105 million. The stock price range of Ask Jeeves during the past 52 weeks was between $1.88-$100.63. The stock price has continued to decrease since end of March 2000.

7.1. Ratios

Important financial data Comparison with Ask Jeeves’ competitors:
(In millions except for ratio)

Search Engine	Revenue	Income/ (Loss)	Asset	Equity	LTD*	ROE**	D/E***	Closing Stock Price (03/01/2001)
Ask Jeeves, Inc.	95.7	(189.6)	537.9	465.8	1.5	(74.7)	0.00	1 11/16
Yahoo! Inc.	1,110.2	70.8	2,269.6	1,896.9	0.0	4.5	0.00	24 7/16
LookSmart Ltd.	112.6	(62.6)	182.4	79.2	0.0	(63.0)	0.01	2 3/32
Excite (Athome Corp.)	616.4	(7,439.8)	2,523.4	1,087.0	829.4	(169.9)	0.60	5 7/8

*LTD : Long Term Debt **ROE: Return on Equity ***D/E: Debt to Equity

7.2. Stock comparison between Ask Jeeves (ASKJ), Yahoo!(YHOO), and Indices

Yahoo! was used as the barometer or comparison stock, as it was the number one competitor.

7.3.
Stock comparison between ASKJ, and YHOO

8. Future

The Company recently formed Ask Jeeves International, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Ask Jeeves. Ask Jeeves International intends to expand through joint venture arrangements with local partners, the use of local management, employees, and by implementing language and country specific deployments of its services. As a leading provider of intuitive, intelligent question answering technologies and services, Ask Jeeves is expanding it services from assisting corporations in increasing e-commerce and advertising revenue, to upgrading corporations' customer service level with the new intergration of M-commerce.

8.1. Next Generation of Voice-Enabled Systems- M Commerce

Ask Jeeves developed the next generation of Voice-Enabled Systems by combining the highest level of expertise in natural language processing, speech recognition and voice applications and hosting. Ask Jeeves’ alliance, Nuance, will improve the accuracy of voice-enabled systems and provide companies with the ability to voice-enable their Web investments as well as other business-critical information. This integration of natural language with speech recognition technologies and General Magic’s voice application presents an enormous opportunity for companies to rely less on the cumbersome phone trees and to reduce customer dependence on expensive call centers. Companies will be able to provide intuitive, voice-driven customer support using the content they have already invested in and developed. Customers will be able to ask questions in natural language via phones and get immediate and relevant answers from the companies they are calling. They can also contact 24-hour support and access E-Commerce information and to navigate information quickly and easily by phone.

This integration is an important step in liberating customers from traditional models of PCs, browsers, and search engines. Today, more and more people around the world are using cell phones, handheld devices or PCs to interact with corporations from M-Commerce to customer service. This innovation allows easy, flexible and mobilized information access from anywhere, anytime.

During the first quarter of year 2002, this advanced interactive response system will be available to companies enriching customer service with fast and easy access to information and web navigation.

8.2. Joint Marketing Agreement with Nuance and General Magic

Ask Jeeves’ relationships with Nuance and General Magic will result in the availability of voice-driven products for the essential E-Commerce and E-Support services. In this joint marketing agreement, these three companies will co-distribute the solution to enterprises and voice portals worldwide. General Magic will produce personality-rich voice user interfaces and hosting business solutions in its 24/7 Network Operations Center, while Nuance and Ask Jeeves provide a high quality customer service by assisting hundreds of blue chips companies (American Airline, Ford, Microsoft and TD Waterhouse, etc.) to conduct business online with their advanced integration. Aided by Ask Jeeves technology, Nuance will include the enhancements into its core speech-recognition engine and grammars. By utilizing a larger, combined sales force by these 3 companies, the seamless solution will be deployable and available either party.

8.3. Expansion of Global Opportunity

The natural language navigation tool, Answer 5.0, enables companies to identify site content holes and capture the underlying wants and needs of customers by using proprietary algorithms and sophisticated technology. Global deployment of Answer 5.0 is localized and easily integrated with existing systems, enabling more multinational companies to use the intelligence gained by answering questions in one language to economically deploy user-driven content in other languages, including French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Brazilian Portuguese. More languages will be added according to demand in order to expand the Global Market and their customer base.

Ask.com launched Home Page Editor Software for Mobile Phones in the Japanese market on Feb 19, 2001. By using this software, edited data is converted to comply with each service of I-mode, EZ Web or J-sky. It will be priced at 4,780 yen or about $50 US. It is available for Windows MW/98/2000/NT 4.0. Users can edit on a PC while checking the actual image that will be displayed on the mobile phone’s screen.

8.4. Expansion of Domestic Market

Verizon Information Services, the world’s largest directory company and Ask Jeeves announced an agreement making SuperPages.com by Verizon the premier provider on Ask.com. Ask Jeeves and Ask.com will provide more than 10 million unique users with a direct link to the Yellow Pages. This agreement gives Ask.com users access to the 13 million comprehensive business listings on SuperPages.com with useful information in the local area and on the Web. This partnership agreement will increase consumer traffic to SuperPages.com and provide enhanced value for advertisers.

Appendices

9. Appendix A – Ask Jeeves Customers

Ask Jeeves' customers include:

AirTouch Communications
Compaq
DaimlerChrysler
Datek Online
Dell
Ford Motor Company
Hewlett-Packard
Iomega

iWon
Microsoft
Nike
Office Depot
RadioShack
Toshiba
VerticalNet

10. Appendix B – Ask Jeeves Partnerships

Ask Jeeves’ partners include”

Carlton Communications Plc
Granada Media Group
Direct Hit Technologies
Catcha.com

UKMax.com
Punto
Scandinavia Online

11. Appendix C – Ask Jeeves Competitors

Ask Jeeves’ competitors include:

Active Research, Inc.
Frictionless Commerce, Inc.
Interactive Desktop Video,
LLC, Art Technology Group, Inc.
Interwoven, Inc.
mySimon,
Inc., BroadVision, Inc.
Interworld Corporation
Kana Communications, Inc.
eGain Communications Corp.
Brightware, Inc.
Mustang.com, Inc.
Webline Communications Corp.,
FaceTime Communications, Inc.,
LivePerson, Inc.
Aptex Software, Inc
Inktomi Corporation
Google, Inc.
AltaVista Company, Verity, Inc.
Infoseek Corporation

Autonomy, Inc.
eHNC
Big Science Company
Neuromedia, Inc.
Artificial Life, Inc.
Siebel Systems, Inc.
PeopleSoft, Inc.
Silknet Software, Inc.
Octane Software, Inc.
ServiceWare, Inc.
Servicesoft Technologies, Inc.
Answers.com
Primus Knowledge Solutions, Inc.
Advantagekbs, Inc.
Nortel Networks Corporation
Excite@Home Corporation
Yahoo! Inc.
Goto.com, Inc.
LookSmart, Ltd.

12. Appendix D – Ask Jeeves Income Statement

ANNUAL INCOME STATEMENT
In Millions of U.S. Dollars (except for per share items)	12 Months Ending 12/31/00	12 Months Ending 12/31/99	12 Months Ending 12/31/98 Restated 12/31/99	12 Months Ending 12/31/97 Restated 12/31/99	7 Months Ending 12/31/96
Revenue	95.7	22.0	0.8	0.0	0.0
Other Revenue	–	–	–	–	–
Total Revenue	95.7	22.0	0.8	0.0	0.0
Cost of Revenue	39.3	14.1	1.4	0.0	0.0
Gross Profit	56.4	7.9	(0.6)	0.0	0.0
Selling/ General/ Administrative Expenses	111.2	43.7	4.6	0.3	0.0
Research & Development	24.5	8.6	1.7	0.4	0.1
Depreciation/ Amortization	3.0	3.9	0.0	0.0	0.0
Interest Expense (Income), Net Operating	–	–	–	–	–
Unusual Expense (Income)	107.7	6.6	–	–	–
Total Operating Expense	285.7	76.9	7.8	0.8	0.1
Operating Income	(190.0)	(54.9)	(7.0)	(0.7)	(0.1)
Interest Expense, Net Non-Operating	–	(0.2)	0.0	0.0	–
Interest/ Investment Income, Non-Operating	2.3	2.2	0.2	0.0	0.0
Interest Income (Expense), Net Non-Operating	2.3	2.0	0.2	0.0	0.0
Gain (Loss) on Sale of Assets	–	–	–	–	–
Income Before Tax	(187.8)	(52.9)	(6.8)	(0.7)	(0.1)
Income Tax	1.8	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Income After Tax	(189.6)	(52.9)	(6.8)	(0.7)	(0.1)
Minority Interest	–	–	–	–	–
Equity In Affiliates	–	–	–	–	–
Net Income Before Extra. Items	(189.6)	(52.9)	(6.8)	(0.7)	(0.1)
Accounting Change	–	–	–	–	–
Discontinued Operations	–	–	–	–	–
Extraordinary Item	–	–	–	–	–
Net Income	(189.6)	(52.9)	(6.8)	(0.7)	(0.1)
Preferred Dividends	–	–	–	–	–
Income Available to Common Excl. Extra. Items	(189.6)	(52.9)	(6.8)	(0.7)	(0.1)
Income Available to Common Incl. Extra. Items	(189.6)	(52.9)	(6.8)	(0.7)	(0.1)
Basic/ Primary Weighted Average Shares	34.40	20.05	9.16	3.39	1.30
Basic/ Primary EPS Excl. Extra. Items	(5.512)	(2.640)	(0.743)	(0.213)	(0.083)
Basic/ Primary EPS Incl. Extra. Items	(5.512)	(2.640)	(0.743)	(0.213)	(0.083)
Dilution Adjustment	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Diluted Weighted Average Shares	34.40	20.05	9.16	3.39	1.30
Diluted EPS Excl. Extra. Items	(5.512)	(2.640)	(0.743)	(0.213)	(0.083)
Diluted EPS Incl. Extra. Items	(5.512)	(2.640)	(0.743)	(0.213)	(0.083)
Dividends per Share - Common Stock	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000
Gross Dividends - Common Stock	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Stock Based Compensation	–	21.5	0.4	0.0	–
Pro Forma Net Income	–	(74.4)	(7.2)	(0.8)	–
Pro Forma Basic EPS	–	(3.710)	(0.780)	(0.220)	–
Pro Forma Diluted EPS	–	(3.710)	(0.780)	(0.220)	–
Interest Expense, Supplemental	–	0.2	0.0	0.0	–
Total Special Items	107.7	6.6	–	–	–
Normalized Income Before Tax	(80.1)	(46.3)	(6.8)	(0.7)	(0.1)
Effect of Special Charge on Income Taxes	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Income Taxes Excl. Impact of Special Items	1.8	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Normalized Income After Tax	(81.9)	(46.3)	(6.8)	(0.7)	(0.1)
Normalized Income Available to Common	(81.9)	(46.3)	(6.8)	(0.7)	(0.1)
Basic Normalized EPS	(2.380)	(2.312)	(0.743)	(0.213)	(0.083)
Diluted Normalized EPS	(2.380)	(2.312)	(0.743)	(0.213)	(0.083)

13. Appendix E – Ask Jeeves Balance Sheet

ANNUAL BALANCE SHEET
In Millions of U.S. Dollars (except for per share items)	As of 12/31/00	As of 12/31/99	As of 12/31/98 Restated 12/31/99	As of 12/31/97
Cash & Equivalents	64.1	17.4	8.5	0.5
Short Term Investments	40.8	34.1	0.0	0.0
Cash and Short Term Investments	105.0	51.5	8.5	0.5
Trade Accounts Receivable, Net	22.8	8.5	0.3	0.0
Other Receivables	–	–	–	–
Total Receivables, Net	22.8	8.5	0.3	0.0
Total Inventory	–	–	–	–
Prepaid Expenses	6.2	6.4	0.1	0.0
Other Current Assets	–	–	–	0.0
Total Current Assets	134.0	66.4	8.9	0.5
Property/ Plant/ Equipment - Gross	–	8.8	1.0	0.1
Accumulated Depreciation	–	(1.4)	(0.1)	0.0
Property/ Plant/ Equipment, Net	19.1	7.4	0.9	0.1
Goodwill, Net	–	–	–	–
Intangibles, Net	381.6	–	–	–
Long Term Investments	–	–	–	0.0
Other Long Term Assets	3.2	2.3	0.1	–
Total Assets	537.9	76.2	9.9	0.6
Accounts Payable	5.2	4.7	0.8	0.0
Accrued Expenses	28.7	17.8	0.6	0.1
Notes Payable/ Short Term Debt	–	–	–	–
Current Port. LT Debt/ Capital Leases	0.9	0.8	0.0	0.0
Other Current Liabilities	33.4	7.3	0.2	0.0
Total Current Liabilities	68.2	30.6	1.6	0.1
Long Term Debt	–	–	–	–
Capital Lease Obligations	1.5	2.4	0.0	0.0
Total Long Term Debt	1.5	2.4	0.0	0.0
Total Debt	2.4	3.2	0.1	0.0
Deferred Income Tax	–	–	–	–
Minority Interest	–	–	–	–
Other Liabilities	2.4	1.3	0.0	–
Total Liabilities	72.1	34.3	1.6	0.1
Redeemable Preferred Stock	–	–	–	–
Preferred Stock - Non Redeemable, Net	0.0	0.0	11.6	0.0
Common Stock	465.8	107.6	4.8	1.1
Additional Paid-In Capital	–	–	–	–
Retained Earnings (Accum. Deficit)	–	(60.6)	(7.6)	(0.6)
Treasury Stock - Common	–	–	–	–
Other Equity	–	(5.2)	(0.5)	0.0
Total Equity	465.8	41.9	8.3	0.5
Total Liability & Shareholders’ Equity	537.9	76.2	9.9	0.6
Shares Outs. - Common Stock	35.60	28.47	11.59	5.91
Total Common Shares Outstanding	35.60	28.47	11.59	5.91
Employees (actual figures)	–	416	–	–
Number of Common Shareholders (actual figures)	–	17,371	–	–
Copyright © 2000 Market Guide Inc. All rights reserved

References

High a Jeeves, By Reva Basch, Database, June 1999

Ask Jeeves, By Sarah Pike, PC Magazine, December 5, 2000

Ask Jeeves, Inc., HooversOnline.com

What is Ask Jeeves, AskJeeves.com

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YAHOO INC (NasdaqNM:YHOO), Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo!, Current Quote

LOOKSMART LTD (NasdaqNM:LOOK), Yahoo! Finance, Current Quote

AT HOME CP A (NasdaqNM:ATHM), Yahoo! Finance, Current Quote