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Barry Diller No Longer CEO Of IAC, Ask.com

Barry Schwartz on December 2, 2010 at 5:16 pm

Reuters reports Barry Diller, the CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp, which bought Ask years back, is no longer the CEO of the company. Barry Diller recently gave up on Ask.com with competing with Google, turning Ask.com back into a Q&A site.

Now Diller is the chairman and senior executive of IAC, and the current CEO of IAC portfolio company Match.com, Greg Blatt, will take over as the CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp.

Part of this news is that cable company Liberty Media has bought out of the company, trading in their shares of IAC in exchange for $220 million in cash and Gifts.com and Evite, once part of IAC.

John Malone, Liberty Media’s chairman said:

We are pleased to welcome Evite and Gifts.com to Liberty Interactive’s e-commerce companies. These companies are established leaders and build on our strength in specialty commerce. Our 17-year relationship with Barry has been very beneficial in creating value for our shareholders, and this transaction represents an efficient exit for Liberty from our IAC stake. We will continue to work together through Expedia and various other public vehicles created from our association.

TechCrunch has a statement from Diller:

“These last 17 years of my association with John Malone and Liberty Media have been a great, and occasionally, wild ride. We began this grand tour of interactivity a few years before the internet became widely used, and we were able to create, acquire and build up substantial businesses over that time.

While I’ll continue my association with Dr. Malone in Expedia, and as significant shareholders of the multiple spun-off companies, Liberty’s exit from IAC is a turning point, and I want to state my thanks and gratitude to Dr. Malone for his support and encouragement throughout (with one brief period of mutual discontent which we both believe was an aberration).

This has been a most productive partnership and I’m glad it will continue in other venues.”

More on this news can be found at Techmeme.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.