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Ask Jeeves Bought by InterActiveCorp

Source Title:
Ask Jeeves Inc. to Be Bought for $2 Billion
Source Url:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/21/business/21deal.html
Story Text:
UPDATE: Done deal.. IAC own ASK
Ask Jeeves, and of course recently aquired Bloglines, are about to be bought by InterActive Corp according the the NYT and other sources - Big news in Search!

IAC/InterActiveCorp, the Internet company headed by Barry Diller, is close to an agreement to acquire Ask Jeeves Inc., the nation's fourth-largest search engine company, for about $1.9 billion, according to an executive involved in the negotiations.

Did search just gain a serious 4th player?

- Y! MyWeb

Will be interesting

The whole network will benefit - a hefty network of high traffic sites plus all the insight they gain from raw search data. I can see Ask bringing out their own advertising system, perhaps contextual. If only to use it on their own sites..

By chrisgarrett at Mar 21 2005 - 10:07

 

You sure rocked my boat for the day. It's big if they contiinue the commitment to improving search. If they just try to milk it it will be another Webcrawler or Excite - roadkill.

I keep hearing the names of some of these IAC properties, but have never used them. Bring me up to speed, is this a class outfit or just a big holding company?

By Brad at Mar 21 2005 - 12:07

some of their sites

some of their properties from their home page http://www.iac.com/ :

Anyway.com, Citysearch, Classic Custom Vacations, Domania, Entertainment Publications, Evite, Expedia, Expedia Corporate Travel, GetSmart, Gifts.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, HSN, HSE24, Interval International, LendingTree, Match.com, RealEstate.com, ReserveAmerica, Precision Response Corporation, ServiceMagic, Ticketmaster, TV Travel Shop, TripAdvisor, udate.com, WWTE, ZeroDegrees

I think they are going to spin Expedia off into its own company.

CitySearch
Expedia
Hotels.com
Hotwire
LendingTree
Match.com
LendingTree

are all well branded sites, or sites I have heard of or used multiple times.

By seobook at Mar 21 2005 - 12:35

done deal

http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/21/technology/askjeeves/

By seobook at Mar 21 2005 - 14:33

Media Play

John Battelle naturally has something to say on this:

Quote:
The long and short of it is this: This is a media play, pure and simple.

By Nick W at Mar 21 2005 - 18:50