IAC Acquires Ask Jeeves

Posted on March 25, 2005

IAC/InterActiveCorp and Ask Jeeves, Inc. announced they have signed an agreement under which IAC will purchase Ask Jeeves. IAC operates more than 40 specialized consumer brands in the travel, retailing, ticketing, personals, media, financial services, real estate and teleservices industries. The acquisition comes shortly after Ask Jeeves acquisition of Bloglines, an online news aggregator.

Barry Diller, Chairman and CEO of IAC, said, "Ask Jeeves was founded almost ten years ago based on the idea that simple text search results alone are not sufficient or satisfying -- but, rather, that consumers want answers to questions -- and questions posed in natural language and answered with spot-on accuracy were especially desired and appealing. Of the many search engines launched during that time, Ask was one of the very few that established itself ... and we believe that in the future it has the potential to become one of the great brands on the Internet and beyond, and by beyond we mean in wireless, in the search for anything on any device. It is that belief, powered by IAC's wealth of resources and thriving businesses, together with the continuing strong management of Steve Berkowitz and his team, that is the impetus for this transaction."

Shortly before being acquired by IAC, Ask Jeeves acquired Trustic, Inc., the company that owns and operates Bloglines. Bloglines is an online service for searching, subscribing, publishing and sharing RSS feeds. Bloglines will continue to operate as an independent brand in the Ask Jeeves portfolio and retain its name and bloglines.com URL.

"Bloglines is not only a market leader in feed aggregation and blog search, but it is truly one of the most useful and addictive services on the entire Web. We are excited about providing Bloglines with the resources to grow its service and help it reach a broader audience," said Jim Lanzone, Ask Jeeves' senior vice president of search properties. "Bloglines is a natural fit for our multi-brand portfolio, as we extend our information retrieval services to encompass the rapidly growing amount of dynamic content and information available in the blogosphere."