IAC, Ask.com’s parent company, has announced that Jim Lanzone, the CEO of Ask.com, will be replaced immediately by Jim Safka as the new CEO of Ask.com. Safka was previously the CEO of Match.com, IAC’s online dating company, from 2004 to 2007. He will also retain his job at as CEO of Primal Ventures, an investment […]
IAC Looks to Expand Web Presence in China from the Wall Street Journal reports Ask.com is planning on coming to China within two years. Barry Diller said he plans on spending $100 million to bring Ask.com to China. Diller told the Wall Street Journal, “We’ve certainly got enough capital to do damage,” and admitted there […]
Barry Diller to Time Warner: Name Your Price for AOL from AdAge has a Q&A session with Barry Diller, the CEO of IAC, the parent company of Ask.com. Diller was asked about the split up of IAC into five business units, his thoughts on the growth of the Internet, Facebook’s valuation, if he would like […]
Today is a big day for IAC, Ask.com’s parent company. First they announce they are breaking the company into five publicly traded entities, and then they announce they have extended their search ad deal with Google.
Ask.com Ad Pact With Google Ends Soon from CNNMoney.com covers how the deal for Ask.com to carry Google’s paid listings expires at the end of this year and suggests Ask.com has more to lose than Google by not renewing it. Let’s break down some of those numbers from the story:
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
The iWon site has been relaunched with a new look and with the intention to give away more prizes. Barry Diller’s IAC revamps iWon.com from BusinessWeek details most of the changes, which include more “games, more prizes and plans to add social networking functions.” In addition, iWon will contain a search toolbar that links search […]
Ask has partnered with IAC sister company EPI, publisher of “The Entertainment Book,” which offers coupons and discounts to local businesses. Entertainment, which has had several false starts with online distribution, is planning to pump 75 percent of its coupons into AskCity. They may also eventually make their way to Ask.com’s SmartAnswers and finally into […]
Forbes released its latest The Forbes 400 list, and among the top ten richest Americans are Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Gates topped the list at number one with a net worth of $59.0 billion. Sergey Brin is listed at number five, with a net worth of $18.5 billion. Larry […]
Ask.com’s parent company, IAC, released their second quarter earnings statement today. Ask.com is bundled into the “Media & Advertising” category, which overall reported higher revenue than the previous year by 33%. However, Ask.com realized a “lower revenue per query since the launch” of Ask 3D in June. Why? Because the new interface requires less clicks […]
It was about to be one spicy Friday, as Searcharazzi received a call on Thursday from a recruiter looking to replace a top editor in the search space. The conversation went something like this: Recruiter: “Our client is looking to replace the top spot at [name of publication].” Searcharazzi: “I thought that role was filled […]
Ask Sponsored Listings is going to be added to Microsoft Office Live’s adManager Beta search advertising service. This is reportedly the first time in five years that two of the top five search engines have joined together to offer search engine ads to advertisers. This will enable those using Microsoft’s adManager to easily advertise on […]
Wired is reporting on a lawsuit filed in US District Court in Texas against Verizon and its now spun-off directory division Idearc. The suit (PDF file) claims infringement of patent 5,930,474, “Internet organizer for accessing geographically and topically based information.” This goes to the essence of many if not most local search sites online today. […]
Ask.com has appointed Mark Stockford as the new senior vice president of operations today. Stockford will be responsible for the planning and operations of technology and engineering departments at Ask.com as well as all of Ask.com’s data center operations. Stockford previously held employment at eBay, PayPal and Excite@Home. Chuck Geiger, executive cp of technology and […]
On Friday I received a briefing on Ask Mobile (with GPS) and a demo phone with the application pre-installed. I now have three mobile devices that I’m carrying: a traditional cellphone, a Windows Mobile device and the Ask Mobile demo phone. It’s quite a challenge to physically manage all these devices as I walk and […]
Reuters and the Wall Street Journal have broken the story early. Ask has launched a new GPS-powered mobile application that contains content from Citysearch and Evite (and other IAC properties in the future). In my quick demo of the phone I was impressed with its many features and capabilities. But the most interesting and impressive […]
Ask.com is launching a new sponsored listings contextual product and will go live the week of May 21st. The Ask contextual product will initially launch within IAC’s own network of sites including Match.com, Ticketmaster, Evite and Citysearch and will then expand to trusted third party publishers. Individual publishers will most likely have to wait until […]
Judy’s Book, which has gone through a very interesting and very public change in its business model – from local directory with reviews to shopping site – has now launched a search engine for deals and coupons: CouponLooker.com. It seeks to be an aggregator of deals online to enable people to find them more quickly […]
VentureBeat is reporting that Citysearch/IAC is the mystery buyer of InsiderPages. A purchase price was not disclosed. The formal announcement will apparently come later today or early tomorrow [now confirmed, see below]. I would guess the purchase price wasn’t more than 2x what the investors put in (TechCrunch guesses $13 million), given that the company […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:
Last night Ask.com’s parent company, IAC, reported earnings. Bloomberg reports that IAC’s profits dropped 98 percent in the fourth-quarter. The blame goes to the “entertainment coupon division.” But Ask.com’s media and ad segment division did pretty well, showing a growth of 46 percent in revenue from $109.5 million in Q4 2005 to $159.8 million in […]
Spotted via Marketing Pilgrim, this interview with Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone by Donna Bogatin at ZDNet on his vision and his role within both Ask and parent company IAC: “We are a world-class technology company and we are able to take ingredients from our sister companies, luckily in many cases premium ingredients because they are […]
Joining Yahoo Local, Windows Live Local, Google Maps, and IAC-owned Citysearch and AskCity, YellowPages.com announced a new “send to mobile” feature. The listing and contact details are sent via text to the user’s mobile phone. Here’s a result for the search “Plumbers, New York.” (Send to mobile is on the upper right of each ad.)