Diller Reveals Plans for Ask Jeeves

By: Nick W [privmsg - website] On 23rd Mar 2005 In
- Business Issues

Source Title:
Barry Diller Reveals Plans for Ask Jeeves

Source Url:
http://www.searchenginelowdown.com/2005/03/barry-diller-reveals-plans-for-ask.html

Story Text:

The InformationWeek blog has the scoop on Barry Dillers plans for recently aquired Ask Jeeves

Diller plans to grow Ask Jeeves by placing a search bar on Web pages of IAC’s other sites such as the online travel agency Expedia, Home Shopping Network, Ticketmaster, CitySearch, and Match.com. Diller said IAC sites attract 44 million unique visitors, and expects many of them to use the Ask Jeeves search bar instead of going to another site to conduct a search, such as Google.

I was rather hoping he had something a bit more radical up his sleeve than that, say the search interface of the future?

- Y! MyWeb

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I just changed my profile quote over at SEW:

the slippery slope just went black diamond

By rcjordan at Mar 23 2005 - 18:35

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Things that make you go hmmmmmmmm

By sugarrae at Mar 23 2005 - 18:49

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go hmmmmmm

Yeah, I can't say that the QVC-ization of search appeals to me ...well, unless I'm the one doing the QVC-izationing.

By rcjordan at Mar 23 2005 - 19:25

Analysts are talking about integration and portals and here's Diller driving traffic backwards. Smart, or too smart?

By jimbeetle at Mar 23 2005 - 19:33

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(Hi Jim)

Smart. It can be done, it's just a question of finesse.

By rcjordan at Mar 23 2005 - 19:55

(Hey Bob)

Finesse. That's what surprises me about the approach. But, it's Diller, and he hasn't stumbled as yet.

By jimbeetle at Mar 23 2005 - 20:24

The Economist:

The Economist reports on this today also, I think you have to have a subscription to get there but one interesting para is:

Quote:

As a group, despite Mr Diller's past talk of huge cross-selling opportunities, these businesses have never entirely connected up. Certainly there are synergies, says Mr Diller, and in some areas these have been exploited—such as links between lendingtree.com and realestate.com. But the result has left IAC rather difficult to understand and—more annoyingly for Mr Diller—its shares valued less generously than those of more focused internet firms such as Google or Amazon.

By eurotrash at Mar 23 2005 - 20:36

Yeah, I'd agree with that, ET. It's mildly dysfuntional as a whole. (But the disjointed pieces are damn nice, eh?) Still, something needs to tie them all together, give them critical mass somehow. Jeeves a masthead brand-name for a portal-esque network? Maybe, but Debbie says not.

All the arm-chair analysis aside, from the perspective of search marketing I'd say a fox is in the henhouse.

By rcjordan at Mar 23 2005 - 22:26

Not dumb at all

driving traffic backwards

Could prove to be a brilliant move: make even more money from visitors leaving your sites ...

By fantomaster at Mar 23 2005 - 22:40

>Not dumb at all

I would never use the words dumb and Diller in the same sentence. Anything he does has the potential of being brilliant. And shrewd. As RC says, "the fox is in the henhouse." One that tends to look at things a bit differently and sees potential value in a twist of some sort where others don't.

They say integrate, he keeps his properties separate. The pundits talk local search, Diller talks global search.

I'm just very curious to see what's next on his agenda after the search box on every page. That is besides buying one or two more consumer properties. Jobs? Autos? If it makes steady money, he'll be there.

By jimbeetle at Mar 23 2005 - 23:19

I would never use the words dumb and Diller in the same sentence

Ain't that the truth.

Having said that I don't really see the logic in it. Some of the recent buys have been good, they have a very nice portfolio and I can see it would be nice to use AJ to drive more traffic to those exsisting properties. I think there are a lot of cheaper ways of doing that though.

I think this is more proof, if it were needed, that we are having dot.com boom part II. Remember back in the day when every company was renaming themselves by adding .com, I think this is the modern day version of that. Search is white hot at the moment, I think Mr Diller wants a piece of the P/E ratio.

the fox is in the henhouse

Nails it, imho. This isn't good news for the independent webmaster. The most sucessful SE's have been those that have maintained a "ask not what my search engine can do for me, ask what it can do for my users" mind set. AJ, nice people that they are, is currently a POS search engine, I can only see that getting worse under the new ownership. I for one will be keeping a close eye on it, if Mr Diller starts to take the piss I would suggest we take it back x 10. The Ask guys have long complained that nobody spams them, they were even looking to pay people to do so at one stage so they could get some testing. They may get their wish.

By NFFC at Mar 24 2005 - 04:54

dot.com boom part II

Yes, that was my first thought, to: Big Money out on an IT shopping spree again, though (as yet) more narrowly focused.

And in reference to your Kennedyesque quote, I guess it bears completion, namely: "the least successful SEs have been those that have maintained 'ask not what my search engine can do for me, ask what I can do for my search engine'". Aka the white hat crowd ...

They may get their wish.

Amen, yeah, and amen! So how about preparing a really vast Spam-an-Engine competition?

By fantomaster at Mar 24 2005 - 06:02

Some shareholder has sued Jeeves for accepting too low an offer heh...

By Nick W at Mar 24 2005 - 11:32

Putting AJ search on all those properties can only help. But that is a fairly short term goal. I suspect portalization of AJ will be the strategy.

I also wonder what they will do with the Excite, Myway properties?

By Brad at Mar 24 2005 - 14:27