Thoughts on the IAC Acquisition of Ask Jeeves
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Written By Reprise Media | March 21, 2005 | Share This
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Most of you have already heard the news that Ask Jeeves is being bought by IAC for close to $2 billion big ones.
As you may or may not know, we at Reprise Media have close ties to Jeeves. The company was founded by former Jeeves employees and close to a dozen of our current employees […]
Most of you have already heard the news that Ask Jeeves is being bought by IAC for close to $2 billion big ones.
As you may or may not know, we at Reprise Media have close ties to Jeeves. The company was founded by former Jeeves employees and close to a dozen of our current employees spent time under the employ of the Butler.
Given that perspective, it’s strange to hear this finally coming to fruition, because we’ve been talking about it (and saying it would be a good acquisition) since 2000, back when it was just a twinkle in an investor’s eye and HSN was Barry Diller’s flagship property. The idea made sense back then, but now more so than ever.
Here’s why:
From the Jeeves perspective:
Jeeves has long played the role of the “tweener” company, occupying territory somewhere between the role of the “scrappy upstart” and fully-formed search networks like Google, MSN, and Yahoo! This could only fly for so long. Jeeves will now have access to deeper pockets to market itself, continue to build and innovative, and attract and retain more talent.
From IAC’s standpoint:
Barry Diller, Chairman and CEO of IAC, has often said that the idea of “synergy” among IAC’s properties is a myth. Rather, it’s all about buying and holding on to good, valuable assets (btw, Battelle’s blog contains a post today with some excerpts from a Business 2.0 article touching on this topic from earlier in the year).
We’ve always believed search could act as a thread between IAC’s different properties, in a couple of different ways:
- Vertical search - It’s all the rage lately. If you apply Jeeves’ Teoma technology to all the rich content at Citysearch, Ticketmaster, Expedia, etc. suddenly you could have a series of very powerful , specialized search engines .
- Micro communities - Taking vertical search further, these can be formed on each of the IAC properties that can then be included within the Jeeves database and become a self-perpetuating community of sites, across local, travel, dating, etc.
- Blogging - Bloglines, acquired last month by Jeeves, could also introduce very deep, rich content across all of these verticals and play a part in changing the way that blog content and “mainstream” content play together.
Other notable benefits and applications:
- IAC will benefit from a reduced reliance on Google, Yahoo!, and MSN for traffic and present a stronger, more unified personality in the market.
- Jeeves will have a reduced reliance on Google’s AdWords product - they can opt to suppress Google ads when they’ve got IAC-specific offers that match a user’s intent.
- Since IAC owns the content, the platform and the engine, if the model in the search market changes from CPM to CPC to CPA, IAC will be in a great position to reap the benefits (had enough acronyms yet?). This can be an interesting case of Jeeves/IAC going head-to-head with Yahoo! on being both the distribution valve and the commerce arm.
- As Charlene Li said, this newfound ability to capture user queries will give IAC a great way to learn about their various business units. As they see how people search, they can refine their own operations.
- Is there a new Contextual network on the horizon? Jeeves bought Excite, iWon, and the rest of Interactive Search Holdings. They also bought Bloglines and now they’re being wrapped into Citysearch, Expedia, Ticketmaster, etc. That’s a lot of content to serve ads against. The possibilities are endless, and we’d be surprised not to see a new network emerge from this company.
Wrapping it up, congratulations go out to all our old friends at Jeeves, but special credit to CEO Steve Berkowitz. He went beyond simply ’saving’ Jeeves or ‘turning it around’ for them - he built the company into a very viable competitor to the Big 3.
Topics: Investment, M&A, Search: Innovations |
No doubt about it. Ask Jeeves emerges as a mature visionary of the post bubble marketplace. In being picked up IAC, it wasn’t rescued from any demise. Rather, it’s technology will help augment an ever evolving form of intra-related e-commerce enterprises, and, at the same time, keeps the landscape competative.Mike G.National Account ManagerMasergy Communications925-687-1551
i like th idea of IAC buying jeeves because i think it would give them the perfect opportunity to compter openly with yahoo, google, and msn. I have been a major supporter of jeeves because google, yahoo, and msn have caused me so much trouble.