NEW YORK - InterActiveCorp, the e-commerce holding company headed by mogul Barry Diller, announced plans Monday to acquire Ask Jeeves, in a sign of growing competition in the Internet search field.
IAC said the stock deal was valued at about 1.85 billion dollars.
Diller, chairman and chief executive of IAC, said the company specializing in "natural language" Web searches has enormous potential.
"Ask Jeeves was founded almost 10 years ago based on the idea that simple text search results alone are not sufficient or satisfying -- but, rather, that consumers want answers to questions -- and questions posed in natural language and answered with spot-on accuracy were especially desired and appealing," Diller said.
"Of the many search engines launched during that time, Ask was one of the very few that established itself, ... and we believe that in the future it has the potential to become one of the great brands on the Internet and beyond."
Search engines have recently gained attention in the wake of moves by Google and Yahoo to link advertising to Web searches, generating so-called paid listings or sponsored results.
Ask Jeeves has been ranked as the ninth-largest global Web property by ComScore Media Metrix, and is considered one of the main search engines behind Google and Yahoo.
03/21/2005 14:14 GMT