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After a decade of being known as Ask Jeeves, the search company has finally retired its Jeeves character and rebranded to be simply Ask.com.

The change happened Monday with the front page seeming to take the Google approach of simplicity and function. Visiting Ask.com now presents you with a search entry field and a toolbar. This search toolbar feature can be minimized to display just icons or edited to offer users customized access to the links they want in the order they want them.

Ask has also been doing some work behind the scenes to improve its tools. The route planning and maps tools have been overhauled to offer more flexibility in selecting destinations and adding locations to existing routes. Search results can also now be tailored to link directly to Web information databases such as Wikipedia and Houghton Mifflin.

The other main difference and one Ask hopes will make it stand out from the crowd is its stance on ads. The clear message is fewer ads displayed above search results as a way of reinforcing the company s committment as a serious search engine.

Read more at CNET .

MATTHEW S OPINION

It s nice to see Ask is still managing to survive in the burgeoning search market next to the big players such as Google, Yahoo. and Microsoft. This rebranding won t do it any harm, since the name is even simpler to remember and type in, and the new features add nicely to the site s repertoire.

I m not sure how long the reduced ad results idea will last, since it could drive advertisers away and stop users clicking the minimal ads altogether. Because the revenue stream generated from the ads is quite key to the search engine, it needs people clicking paid-for links regularly.

I doubt Ask.com is ever going to climb above the other major search engines, but its 10-year history shows it has staying power and that there is certainly a place for it on the Web. Add it to your Firefox search engines list and try an alternative for a change.