Ask is a Q&A focused search engine

Web search engine

A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web and FTP servers. The search results are generally presented in a list of results often referred to as SERPS, or "search engine results pages". The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other...

 founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener

Garrett Gruener

Garrett Gruener is founder of Ask.com and a co-founder of Alta Partners, a venture capital firm. He was also a candidate for the 2003 California recall special election from the Democratic Party, finishing 28th in a field of 135 candidates with 2,562 votes....

 and David Warthen

David Warthen

David Warthen, born on December 10, 1957 was one of the founders of Ask.com, an internet search engine. In 2004, Warthen joined the streaming video technology company GlobalStreams, where he served as CTO. In 2004 he founded , a webcam-based children's video game company. He currently serves on...

 in Berkeley, California

Berkeley, California

Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

. The original software was implemented by Gary Chevsky

Gary Chevsky

Gary Chevsky was the founding architect of Ask.com. He immigrated to the United States in 1988 and settled in San Francisco, California....

 from his own design. Warthen, Chevsky, Justin Grant, and others built the early AskJeeves.com website around that core engine. Three venture capital firms, Highland Capital Partners

Highland Capital Partners

Highland Capital Partners is a venture capital firm that focuses on investments in seed, early, and growth stage companies in the communications, consumer, digital media, healthcare, and information technology sectors. The firm's partners include: Peter Bell, Sean Dalton, Bob Davis, Richard de...

, Institutional Venture Partners, and The RODA Group were early investors. Ask.com is currently owned by InterActiveCorp under the NASDAQ

NASDAQ

The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...

 symbol IACI.