If you are Barry Diller and you know that Ask.com has been running at a distant fourth place against the third major search engine, would you sell out your search engine?
Apparently, that seems to be what Barry Diller of Ask.com is contemplating on right now especially with the unshakeable stand that the three major search engines have waged upon in the search engine market.
Diller was quoted with the following statement:
“We’ve been asked a lot whether we’re open to consolidating transactions in the area of search. The answer is yes,” Diller said. “And, it is unlikely that we would be the consolidator.”
Diller also expressed disappointment about the inability of Ask.com to grow it search engine market share since it was bought by IAC in 2005. What’s aggravating the situation is that even IAC’s media and advertising Departments are also not doing well, with revenues declining by 11% for the third quarter of 2009.
The problem here is that if Ask.com do sell out, who among the other search engines will likely take it? A Microsoft-Yahoo-Ask search partnership is not a possibility. And neither is a Google-Ask integration.
