Ask is buying the company which owns Excite, along with iWon and a few other sites.
Ask Jeeves Inc. will buy the privately owned Interactive Search Holdings Inc. (ISH) for about $343 million in a move that the Emeryville, California, company expects will double its search market share, it announced Thursday.
Very interesting….Ask will have 7% share if the deal goes through…
The market LOVES this deal, its stock is up 31% as of this writing.
(Ask’s press release)
I’ve been using my.iWon.com for my homepage for a while. The same appeal as my.yahoo.com, but with possibility to win money, and all the functionality, like stock-tracking and news built in. Would be sad if Google search box gets replaced with ASKJ one, I’ve grown used to using Google off iWon.
I think ISH also owns MyWay.com, which is a no-ad version of iWon, that has appeal to a large audience tired of flashy ads Yahoo has.