Ask Jeeves mulls $2bn sale
- Added:
- Mar 21, 2005
The Wall St Journal and The New York Times have both reported that an offer of about $2bn (£1.05bn) in IAC shares could be announced early this week.
The companies' boards were in talks Sunday night and an announcement could be made Monday if an agreement is reached.
IAC, owned by media mogul Barry Diller, has 44 million visitors a month to its various sites, which includes travel firm Expedia.com, Ticketmaster, the Home Shopping Network and dating site Match.com.
It is reported that Diller may link IAC’s CitySearch, a search site for restaurants and other services in cities, with Ask in a bid to boost ad revenues. Most of Ask Jeeves' revenue comes from advertising that appears on its sites through a contract with Google, which lasts until 2007.
Ask Jeeves is the fifth most popular search engine in the US and has a market value of $1.43bn.
The California-based search engine nearly doubled in size when it bought Interactive Search Holdings for $501m in May 2004. The deal gave it ownership of businesses My Way, iWon, Excite, My Search and My Web Search.
