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Ask Jeeves Bought for $2 billion

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the jeeves-let-me-axe-u-sumthin dept.

RMX writes "CNet's reporting that Ask Jeeves is being bought by InterActive Corp for $2 billion. Ask Jeeves (ask.com, excite.com, iwon.com) and InterActive Corp (expedia, ticketmaster, match.com, citysearch). This marks a nice comeback for Ask Jeeves, whose stock was quite a roller coaster ride during the 2000-2003 .com crash. Are the good times back?"

7 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. myway by platos_beard · · Score: 3, Informative

    Askjeeves owns myway.com, a portal with the motto "no banners, no ads, no kidding" Let's hope they don't mess with that.

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    What's a sig?
  2. Re:Did anyone by REBloomfield · · Score: 4, Informative

    all the non-technical staff here do, they seem to think that you can just ask it anything and it knows the answer. I've seen some really bad full sentence queries get put into it....

  3. Re:Did anyone by Reignking · · Score: 3, Informative

    Homer Simpson uses Ask Jeeves. He wrote on a Flintstones map last night "Dino. Short for dinosaur? Ask Jeeves."

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    One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
  4. Re:Did anyone by rtt · · Score: 3, Informative


    From The Register:
    Ask Jeeves is the seventh most popular search site in the UK with 1.9 per cent of total searches, Google is a long way in front with 63 per cent. Figures from Hitwise.

    Nope... no one uses Ask Jeeves.

  5. P/E = 114(!) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Earnings were _not_ $86M; they were $17.5M, making the P/E ratio a whopping 114, a definite return to the 'bad ole days'. Ask Jeeves has something like 2% of the search market, so I suspect they're hoping blogs are the Next Big Thing and Bloglines will somehow make this deal work in the next five years.

    It won't.

  6. Re:Sounds about right... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    They didn't make $86M, they made $17.5M, putting the p/e ratio at a ridiculous 114.

  7. Not bought, swapped by Animats · · Score: 2, Informative
    It's a stock swap merger, not a cash buy. "Under the terms of Monday's deal, IAC will issue 1.26 shares of its common stock for each share of Ask Jeeves common stock in a tax-free transaction valued at $1.85 billion, discounting any cash involved in the buyout."

    Like most mergers, it will probably be a dud. The performance history of merger and acquisition activity is, overall, negative. But because it increases volatility, it enhances CEO pay.