Ask.jp seems to still be alive

From doing a completely unrelated search for a term in Japanese, I ran across an ad on Google Japan for the supposed to be closed search engine Ask.

Everyone in search in Tokyo believes Ask.jp is officially dead because they announced it themselves. I do believe the search engine did have some traffic & ties with various media companies in Japan. They also had a huge billboard in Shibuya’s crossing which is like billboard space in Times Square.

If they didn’t announce they were closing perhaps they would still have traffic. Changing the service to new owners would have been a better public announcement. It’s good to have options through with any services.

Anyway good luck to the new owners.

Ask closing announcement