When the week began, those who follow the search engine industry were greeted with news of Ask.com’s impending purchase by IAC, owner of Internet properties like Ticketmaster and Expedia.com. The sale was made for a reported at about $1.85 billion, not a bad sum for the 4th place search engine.
Will IAC’s Resources Boost Ask’s Presence?
How will the IAC purchase affect Ask Jeeves the search engine? Will it boost Ask’s popularity or will it hurt it? Discuss at WebProWorld.
As with any transaction of this magnitude, many wonder what’s going to become of the property being purchased. Steve Berkowitz, CEO of Ask Jeeves, shed some light on this subject, “Joining IAC will enable us to play on a much larger field. We are excited about the opportunity to serve as the connection between IAC’s constellation of leading online properties to share users and content. Ask Jeeves will now be in an even stronger position to aggressively grow market share.”
Apparently, IAC’s goal is to integrate Ask’s search technology into their existing location-sensitive Internet properties, creating one of the largest pools of local information, and local-based queries on the Internet.
This was more or less outlined in the press release: “making Ask Jeeves the search engine with the best local search, content and merchant information on the Web – increasing the distribution of IAC Local merchants and enhancing Ask Jeeves’ local offering.”
Reactions to the merger vary. Most of the message board sentiments are quite supportive of the purchase considering the upcoming influx of cash.
However, on the SearchEngineWatch Forums, Nacho Hernandez asked whether or not Diller’s infusion of money would actually improve Ask’s search product: “I think the only question that comes to my mind is, can Barry Diller or any other millionaire mogul make this search engine gain enough market share to make Ask/Teoma be part of a group that could be called the Big 4′?”
But improving Ask the search engine may not be the goal. Some believe name brand integration may be the driving force behind the acquisition. These thoughts were echoed on the WebmasterWorld forums by poster Jimbeetle, who says, “I think the deal is all about integration, the one thing IAC has lacked.”
Although, what would be the point of purchasing a known commodity just to let it flounder? To assume the motivation is merely technology integration across IAC’s vast web properties is shortsighted. By all accounts, the actual Ask.com search presence is not going anywhere. By keeping Berkowitz and the current management staff, Diller seems to be committed to continuing Ask’s existence. But will that be enough for Ask to compete with the big 3?
SearchEngineLowdown’s Andy Beal sees the IAC purchase paying dividends for their various web properties, as well as the Ask name brand: “I think the merger with IAC will allow Ask Jeeves to expand its audience reach and also provide them with a vast resource that will allow them to better compete with Google and Yahoo.”
On Threadwatch.org however, some wondered, even when IAC’s considerable resources are considered, if Ask could crack the “search engine inner-circle”. Poster goodroi writes
“The bottom line is: To be considered a top tier engine you need significant market share. Ask does not have a significant market share and nor do they offer some great feature that Google, Yahoo or MSN don’t. So there is no big reason for users to switch over. I’d love to see Ask grow but I just doubt it.”
On TheStreet.com, senior columnist Peter Eavis takes a harder line, suggesting Diller should actually be selling the newly acquired Ask property
“First, any big acquisition makes it harder for investors to do proper year-over-year comparisons of financial results. IAC issued a bruising profits warning in August. Managers may see weakness in the business, and another profits disappointment may therefore be on the way. It might be useful to have Ask Jeeves — with its exposure to the supposedly buoyant Internet advertising market — to point to as a future source of growth if the travel outfits are tanking.”
But, does Ask make enough to warrant an almost $2 billion price tag?
Of course, a wait and see attitude may be the best approach, but these are hard to come by in such a pressurized, high-cost arena. However, Barry Schwartz offers a more positive outlook:
“Although it is too early to say, I believe one of the main weaknesses for Ask Jeeves was money. I am hoping with the recent acquisition, Jeeves can seriously begin to compete on a level playing field.”
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest search news.
