America’s favorite cartoon butler, Jeeves, has been sold to IAC/InterActiveCorp for $1.85 billion. The fourth-largest search engine on the internet today, Ask Jeeves goes to a company looking to capitalize on the revenue potential of online advertising and searches. IAC will now step into a battle with giants Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft in an attempt to increase market share. ABC News reports:
“It’s an aggressive move by IAC. We think they’ll face many challenges,” said Susquehanna analyst Marianne Wolk. “They’ll have to invest significantly to improve the search engine,” she said, noting that Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others are investing heavily to improve their own search engines.
IAC, run by media mogul Barry Diller, will pay a premium of about 17 percent for Ask Jeeves, known for the cartoon butler mascot Jeeves on its Ask.com Wed site. IAC said it will issue 1.2668 shares of its stock for each Ask Jeeves share and then buy back at least 60 percent of the shares it issues to partially offset the dilutive effect of the deal. Shares of Oakland, California-based Ask Jeeves, which closed at $24.24 on Friday, traded up more than 15 percent to nearly $28 immediately after the market opened on Monday.
Nathan Novak at 10:37 am
