Ask Jeeves Initiates "Powered By Jeeves" Licensing Program; Next-Generation Search Engine to Rev Up InfoSpace and Infonautics' Electric Library Sites.

BERKELEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--October 17, 1997--Ask Jeeves, Inc. announced today that two major web sites, Infonautics Corporation's Electric Library online research service and InfoSpace, Inc.'s directory service, have licensed Ask Jeeves' "Question Answering" search engine and knowledge base. While Ask Jeeves operates its own search service at http://www.askjeeves.com, this announcement marks the first time the company has licensed its technology to other sites.

Other search engines (such as Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos, Infoseek, and Hotbot) match keywords in a search request to an index of words derived by cataloging almost every word found on the Internet. These sites return a list of "page hits" and it is up to the user to surf the sites and refine the search in order to find the desired information. This can be a long and frustrating process. With Ask Jeeves, unlike other search engines, users type in a question in plain English and then Ask Jeeves presents a list of matched questions (usually just a few). After the user selects the closest match, Ask Jeeves takes them directly to a site that was selected by the Ask Jeeves research staff as being an appropriate answer to the question. The user is never presented with a dreaded response such as "837 matches to your query."

For example, if a user asks "Who is the king of Siam?", Ask Jeeves would respond with "Who is the head of state of Thailand?." When the user clicks on that question, Ask Jeeves takes them to a particular page on a site that lists the leaders of Thailand.

The Ask Jeeves system utilizes sophisticated natural language processing to understand the user's question and a knowledge base created by Ask Jeeves researchers that contains thousands of "question templates" and millions of "answer links" to web sites. Essentially, the Ask Jeeves staff has pre-searched the Internet for the user and has found appropriate sites to answer a wide variety of questions such as "How can I renew my passport?," "What's on TV tonight," "Why is the sky blue?," "How can I learn Java?," and even the Woodchuck Query ("How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"). The effort Ask Jeeves has put into establishing a vast knowledge base saves each user countless hours of searching.

ELECTRIC LIBRARY

Infonautics' (NASDAQ:INFO) Electric Library service (http://www.elibrary.com) is an online research service that provides its members with immediate access to high-quality information. Users can conduct serious research online with Electric Library's discrete database of more than one billion words and thousands of images. Users can launch a comprehensive, simultaneous search through hundreds of full-text newspaper and magazine sources, international newswires, classic books, hundreds of maps, thousands of images, as well as major works of art and literature. Research results are displayed in a matter of seconds.

"We wanted to add an Internet search capability to Electric Library to complement our own wide variety of reference material and Ask Jeeves was an easy choice," said Joshua Kopelman, executive vice president of Infonautics. "The Ask Jeeves technology is the easiest method for people to find information on the Internet. Other search engines locate sites that contain certain keywords, but Ask Jeeves finds a specific site that answers a particular question. Our users want to find answers; they don't want to spend time surfing through irrelevant sites."

INFOSPACE

InfoSpace, Inc., is a leading directory and content aggregator on the Internet. InfoSpace (http://www.infospace.com) has replaced the traditional phone book with technology that integrates directories with the interactivity of the Internet. InfoSpace offers yellow pages, white pages, detailed business information directories including company web sites, toll-free numbers, fax numbers, and e-mail addresses, and local city information including weather, traffic, apartments and much more.

"InfoSpace provides a wide variety of directory and information services and it is vitally important that our users can find the information they want quickly, easily, and accurately," said Naveen Jain, president of InfoSpace. "Ask Jeeves' question-answer approach allows our customers to access our directories using simple English queries such as 'Where can I find a florist in Phoenix?'. Also, unlike other search technologies, the Ask Jeeves engine can easily map user queries into database lookup requests, which is important for a service such as ours."

"We are very pleased that such well-known and respected sites as Electric Library and InfoSpace have chosen Ask Jeeves to help their users find answers on the Internet," said Dan Miller, president of Ask Jeeves, Inc. "In addition to running our own site, an important part of our business model is to license our technology to organizations that want to make their own services more accessible. Our strategy is to position ourselves as an alternative to search engines such as Excite and Alta Vista. Our approach takes more effort since our knowledge base is built by humans instead of spiders, but the payoff is a less frustrating and more rewarding experience for users."

ABOUT ASK JEEVES:

Incorporated in 1996 and based in Berkeley, California, Ask Jeeves, Inc. is the brainchild of David Warthen, CTO and veteran software developer, and Garrett Gruener, venture capitalist and founder of Virtual Microsystems. Roger Strauch and Dan Miller, co-founders of TCSI Corp. (NASDAQ: TCSI), recently joined the Ask Jeeves executive team as Chairman and President, respectively.

Wide acclaim for the Ask Jeeves technology has come from, literally, all corners of the globe. Typical comments from users read like these: "I wish I'd found you earlier. You certainly take the tedium out of surfing the Net! A search engine that thinks like a person. Thanks a lot." and "Wow--Finally a way to search without coming up with ten million combinations of nothing close to what you are looking for! Thank you for making 'searching the web' so much more rewarding and enjoyable." More information on Ask Jeeves can be found at http://www.askjeeves.com .

CONTACT: Berkeley Ventures, Inc.

Sylvia Paull, 510/526-5555

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Ask Jeeves, Inc.

Dan Miller, 510/649-1900 or page: 510/417-9742

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