[ad#right] i’ve never been fond of windows’ animated search assistants, even though i must say that i liked Clippit (“Franz Klammer” in german) best of them all.
here’s part a blog post about microsoft’s history of animated character patents (including pictures):
It’s hard to take Clippy, Microsoft Bob, and Windows XP’s Search Assistant doggie seriously. But a dozen years’ worth of patents relating to the basic idea shows that Microsoft takes it very seriously indeed–and I’m convinced that someone, somewhere within the company is still working away at it.