Ask Jeeves Inc. to Be Bought for $2 Billion

New York Times ^ | March 21, 2005 | GERALDINE FABRIKANT

[GretchenM]

fyi

[dennisw]

Has anyone here ever used "ask Jeeves"? I think I used it once a few years back.

[ambrose]

Maybe twice for me.


Of course, they aren't paying 1.9 billion in cash. Just handing over some Monopoly money stock certificates.

[Pro-Bush]

Outrageous, it can't be worth that much.

[ChadGore]

Irrational Exuberance.

[dennisw]

Ask Jeeves was bought for 1.9 billion in Barry Diller funny money.... gotcha! :)

[dennisw]

Outrageous, it can't be worth that much.

No cash is being spent to buy it. It's being purchased with Diller dollars which are also redeemable at all Disney gay days.

[Selkie]

April Fools came 10 days early.

I didnt even know ask jeeves was still around.

Gee I guess I went down the wrong career track.

I'll just go put together a search engine with a cutesy name and sit back a few years.

[Pro-Bush]

I can always count on you for a laugh. Thank you!

[dennisw]

thx :)

[gentlestrength]

It was my first. Search engine. I loved it. Until I discovered Google, and never used it again. I'm shocked it's selling. Is the info on its search engine that different? I purposely said "don't invest in it" in my imaginary stock trading. And I purposely said yes to Google. Too bad it was imaginary money.

[Northern Alliance]

I don't understand why any of these search engines including Google is worth billions. They seem to have almost no advertising, particularly Google, which I suppose is one reason it became so popular, and what I do see there to be from very small companies that could not possibly have a very big advertising budget. Where do they make their money?

[Rebelbase]

"It was my first. Search engine. I loved it. Until I discovered Google, and never used it again"

Bump.

[Rebelbase]

"Where do they make their money?

There are advertisements on every google page you pull up. Look to the right side of the screen and you'll see a list of "sponsored links". These are paid ads that show up as if they were legit search links.

Also, the top of each page sometimes has a prime positioned result from your search that is a paid spot.

Google also sells its database and advanced search features to industry as well as servers to manage the data.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Yikes, I'd better scrape up a billion quickly to buy MySimon.com before someone else snatches it up!

[InvisibleChurch]

how much will Jim Robinson sell Free Republic for?

[GOP_Proud]

< Has anyone here ever used "ask Jeeves"? I think I used it once a few years back. >

Same for me. I seem to remember not getting it to respond too well. Never went back. Why, when there's so many engines so much better?

[Northern Alliance]

Yes, I know there are sponsored links - many for really low budget, obscure things with small markets.

For example, I saw some of those links for software to retrieve POP3 email into Microsoft Exchange. That typically sells for a few hundred dollars or less and obviously is not a mass-market commodity. The advertisers could not be paying big bucks for those ads. Even given the large potential number of those links and the other sources of income you mentioned, I am surprised there is enough money coming in to put the price in the billions.

[Clock King]

More fast-talking shysters making a quick buck. AskJeeves is not worth $2E9 by a long shot. Either the article is bogus or there are greedy people out there.