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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?"

23 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. IWon is right! by bigtallmofo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Do you think the creators of www.iwon.com had any idea they'd be in store for a $2,000,000,000 windfall?

    --
    I'm a big tall mofo.
  2. Did anyone by OAB_X · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really ever use ask jeeves? I mean, I used it once or twice several years ago, but is it really that popular to be bought for 2 billion? I cant think of anyone who uses it consistently, or even rarely.

    1. 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....

    2. Re:Did anyone by 0x461FAB0BD7D2 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Does anyone really ever use ask jeeves?

      I asked Jeeves, and I got this:
      Many people use Ask Jeeves because it has a picture of a butler

    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."

      --
      One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
    4. Re:Did anyone by garcia · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I can tell you that the only time I was getting hits from Ask Jeeves is when I was banning a stalker from viewing my gallery. Ask Jeeves had apparently indexed my gallery at one point (ignoring the robots.txt) and had not removed it at any time.

      I started seeing these OBNOXIOUS log entries with referrers from ask.com (see here).

      I finally had to email ask.com to have them removed. They ignored my first request and then finally removed it after a repeated request. They certainly weren't as easy to deal w/as Google's removal tool.

      Personally? I'd never use anything other than Google.

    5. Re:Did anyone by yelvington · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not just about AskJeeves, it's about the entire stable of sites/brands/technologies that it owns: Teoma (search technology), Excite, iWon, MyWay and Bloglines. In that collection, there's actually more usage outside the Ask brand that inside it. Here's a recent snapshot.

    6. 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.

  3. Great! by spywhere · · Score: 3, Funny

    Wider distribution for the nightmarish mix of malware provided through AskJeeves!

  4. The Poster Askes by Kushy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Are the good times back?

    Yes they are just not for the USA. Its a good time for India and China, with cheap ass CEO's CFO's CTO's, all outsourcing.

    I really do not see any 'good times' ahead for IT ppl in the US.

    --
    "The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein," - Joe Theisman
    1. Re:The Poster Askes by CSMastermind · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well I must admit that outsourcing has become a problem but the problem lays in how we're dealing with it as well. Now I'll be the first to admit that I hate the large multi-billion dollar transnational corperations. I don't have a hard time believing that they're corrupt and just plain evil but I also must see the fact that there's a way around this.

      On a whole if your IT job was outsourced than it was proablly not a very unique or important job. The 1990s saw a rise in a lot of people getting trained and certified in computers so they could hop on the bandwagon and get a low level IT job, now that the economy is down they're finding their jobs being outsourced.

      If you don't want your job outsourced, then gain a valubale skill so that they can't afford to outsource you, work harder, smarter, and in general better than any overseas empolyee that they can find.

  5. I'd say it's a good thing by CSMastermind · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think this represents a good thing for Ask Jeeves. I remember 5 years or so ago in school when we had to take a class on internet basics and we learned about screach engines. Ask Jeeves was my faviorite because it was one of the few that made sense. But over time I learned about Google and www.alltheweb.com, and I stopped using Ask because I found it's layout overbearing and hard to navigate. Ask also suffered from a poor marketing stragity. I think that if they can reorganize the company then it will be a very positive thing.

  6. So... by Mindjiver · · Score: 4, Funny

    did anyone care to ask Jeeves what he thinks of this?

    --
    I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
  7. 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.

    --
    What's a sig?
  8. Natural Progression of Business... by ciroknight · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It seems like when some new, highly exploitable technology comes out, hundreds of little companies start out. Those companies slowly die out, and the ones that are left, are gobbled up by the largest of the remaining companies, and it leaves room for the new, baby companies again.

    Holds true for cars, computers, and now, .coms. Interesting..

    --
    "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
  9. Good going Jeeves! by AtariAmarok · · Score: 5, Funny

    With $2 billion in his pocket, maybe he can afford now to pay his OWN butler.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  10. Bloglines too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ask Jeeves, Inc. also owns Bloglines.

    Did InterActive own any blog type services prior to this acquisition?

  11. Has anyone asked the search engine? by pmasters · · Score: 3, Funny

    Actually they did:

    http://www.satirewire.com/features/satire-jeeves in terview.shtml

  12. Sounds about right... by magicclams · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Given that the company made about $86 million last year, the selling price ($1.9 billion) represents a price to earnings ratio of ~22...a bit on the high side, but not out of line with a company whose earnings more than doubled last year. Given that this is a profitable survivor acquiring another profitable survivor, I don't think this represents a slide back into the (good? bad?) old days of multi-billion dollar valuations for stocks that barely have a business plan. As for that profitability, it may seem odd to those of us who take it for granted that a query like "prescription drugs canada" makes more sense than "Where can I buy prescription drugs in Canada?", but we're tech geeks. Ask around..."Jeeves" is the portal of choice for the techno-phobic middle-aged and elderly, who typically have a much higher money-to-brains ratio than computer geeks.

  13. Traffic costs are rising by adrianbye · · Score: 3, Insightful

    With the costs/value of traffic rising, sites that have a lot of traffic are being bought. Their value should increase significantly over the next few years. This is also why about.com was bought recently.

  14. Who'se by Golias · · Score: 3, Funny

    "hoo-(gutteral stop)-SAY"

    It's Klingon for "the editors here can't spell."

    --

    Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

  15. 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.

  16. But, is Jeeves gay? by PeeAitchPee · · Score: 3, Funny

    . . . get the answer here.