askcom

Layoff rumors stir the herd at Ask.com

Nicholas Carlson · 02/29/08 09:06AM

"This place was buzzing today that there will be layoffs here soon," an Ask.com employee tips us off. The tipster complains that since completing "a bunch of tests for new ways to make money, no one in my group has seen or heard from management [since] they had a pizza lunch the first week of January." It's the second Ask layoff rumor we've heard this month.

Google up, Yahoo down in U.S. search share

Jordan Golson · 02/22/08 03:20PM

ComScore's January 2008 search rankings are out. Google, AOL and Ask.com had slight share gains at the expense of Yahoo. Search queries were up significantly across the board with Ask and AOL as the big gainers. Here's the chart:

So I married a Stanford-brained escort

Melissa Gira Grant · 02/21/08 03:00PM

Stanford's new financial aid policy, had it gone into effect a bit sooner, might have killed the Valley's own Pretty Woman story: David Warthen, cofounder of Ask.com, married alleged Stanford Law escort Cristina "Brazil" Shultz just four months after Schultz's assets — $61,000 in cash — were seized by the government. From her postings on escort's clients' review boards, bragging of paying off student loans with her new night job, the IRS deduced she must have a lot of unpaid taxes: At $1,300 per two-hour "modeling" appointment, $5,000 for "overnight," and over 80 men claiming they'd been her clients — hey, do the math. After becoming her husband, Warthen was able to convince the Feds that the money was a gift from him, meant as "a benefit for the both of them". Talk trash if you must, but since they likely met on the job, Warthen is telling the truth. Carry on, Jeeves! (Photo by RM Studios)

More heads to roll at IAC?

Nicholas Carlson · 02/14/08 09:25AM

A tipster tells us to expect a "big shakeup at Ask.com," including "change in product lineup and company direction." The shakeup "could effect CA and NJ office, Lots of SVP, EVP, VP, CTO types that probably are redundant." It's a vague and poorly sourced rumor, but with IAC and its chairman Barry Diller already under siege, such a shakeup certainly is plausible. Especially since — judging by M&A exec Jason Rapp, who was recently transferred to unspecified new duties — it may have already begun.

Microsoft demotes poached Ask.com CEO

Nicholas Carlson · 02/11/08 12:41PM

Steve Berkowitz is out as senior vice president of Microsoft's Online Services Group, BoomTown reports. In April 2006, Microsoft lured Berkowitz away from Ask.com, where he was CEO, and charged him with running MSN's ad sales, marketing, and business development. Yep, all the stuff that's failed bad enough that Microsoft now wants to pay $44.6 billion for Yahoo. BoomTown said sources couldn't confirm whether Berkowitz is out of the company or just out his job.

IAC's plan to clone Digg unfolds

Owen Thomas · 02/04/08 07:00PM

Digg and IAC's Ask.com search engine are getting close to launching an Ask-branded version of the popular headline-voting site. We'd heard in December that the two companies were working together. Indeed, the delay in the project's launch may have contributed to Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone's ouster. Without Lanzone, the project is continuing. IAC's hiring a general manager to run an unspecified website — which could well be the Digg-like news site.

Owen Thomas · 01/28/08 07:18PM

The fight between John Malone and Barry Diller is getting brutal. As Diller prepares to spin off several businesses, leaving a company focused on the Oakland-based Ask.com search engine, Malone's Liberty Media has asked a court to remove Diller from IAC's board and allow Liberty to appoint several board members, in an effort to seize control of the company. Liberty owns 30 percent of IAC, and holds 62 percent of the voting rights, but an agreement allows Diller to vote Liberty's shares, giving him effective control of the company. [WSJ]

Careful, "The Internet Party" could make you LOLerskate

Nicholas Carlson · 01/17/08 03:00PM


OK, so Ask.com is no longer Ask Jeeves, and you've never heard of Cracked.com. And really, the Internet isn't that much like a bad college house party at all. But still, parts of the humorous short "The Internet Party," from which we briefly excerpt above, ring true. Like the perky, plucky "Google," who's played by a much less pretty but equally nerdy version of Marissa Mayer.

Barry Diller cuts the fat

Owen Thomas · 01/10/08 11:56PM

Working for Barry Diller is a harrowing experience. Just take a look at Jim Lanzone, the former CEO of Ask.com, before he joined IAC, and after. Even so, we're reconsidering our sympathetic view of Lanzone. We hear that one big reason he was fired was the slipping schedule on an Ask.com news site. Despite putting 20 people nearly full-time on the project, and getting help from Digg, Lanzone missed a December deadline for the site, now slated for a February launch.

At Ask.com, Barry Diller fires another entrepreneur

Owen Thomas · 01/10/08 05:09PM

Bloody Diller. IAC's Ask.com has a new CEO, Jim Safka, who was swiftly installed in the place of Jim Lanzone. Lanzone was fired by Barry Diller, according to sources. And so yet another talented entrepreneurial type makes way for a Diller yes-man. The cover story is that Lanzone left to accept a position as entrepreneur-in-residence at Redpoint Ventures — a cozy, face-saving sort of holding tank for CEOs in between jobs.

Jordan Golson · 12/17/07 05:07PM

Ask, Yahoo, Microsoft and others tried really hard this year to gain on search leader Google. They failed. AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft all dropped in share. Ask gained 0.1 percent. Google? Up as much as 6 percent, depending on whom you ask. Google also had larger gains in terms of total search queries, up 37 percent. Those Stanford kids are onto something. [AdAge]

Ask.com holiday party tonight at the Independent

Owen Thomas · 12/12/07 07:59PM

Barry Diller likes to talk up how New Yorky his Manhattan-headquartered IAC is, but in fact, his most important online businesses are based in California, like Ask.com. San Francisco-area IAC workers are having their holiday party tonight at the Independent, 628 Divisadero St. "Bonus points to anyone who videos themselves gaining entry as Vimeo staff wearing their best American Apparel hoodie and art-skool glasses," says a Grinch of a tipster.

AskEraser fails to erase anything important

Nicholas Carlson · 12/11/07 08:47AM

Put your tinfoil hats back on, folks. IAC's search engine Ask.com has announced a new feature called AskEraser, as expected. It's supposed to be a privacy control allowing users to delete their queries from Ask's server logs, a move meant to set Ask apart in the market. But it won't really do either. Like Ask's television commercials, AskEraser is at once ineffective and confounding. Here's why.

Ask.com inks $3.5 billion ad deal with Google

Owen Thomas · 11/05/07 11:17AM

In the midst of a call laying out IAC's plans to break up into five separate companies, CEO Barry Diller announced that he'd struck a five-year deal with Google to carry its search ads on Ask.com, an arrangement he says will be worth $3.5 billion. As we'd reported, Diller had little choice but to go with Google, since its competition likely couldn't afford to offer equally lucrative terms.

Google in control of Ask.com, not Diller

Tim Faulkner · 10/09/07 05:20PM

With time running out on an advertising deal with Google, Barry Diller's Ask.com is facing bigger issues than the company's painfully unmemorable advertising. The IAC-owned search engine is dependent on Google-brokered text ads for a large portion of its revenues — but Google, which now sells ads on MySpace, among others, is not nearly as dependent on Ask.com. Fortunately for Diller, Microsoft and Yahoo are stupidly eager to prove themselves in the search-advertising market. If Google does end its ad deal with Ask.com, both companies would be happy to sign on Ask as a partner. One small problem: Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft make as much money per search as Google, which means that they have less money to split with Ask, even if they give it a more generous share. And a deal with either one would still leave Ask dependent on a rival search engine. Save for building its own advertising system, at considerable expense, Ask has no easy way out of the Google deal.

Jordan Golson · 10/01/07 04:33PM

Barry Diller's IAC/InterActive Corp. launched a revamped iWon.com portal. The search engine, acquired along with Ask.com, has always drawn visitors by offering prizes. But it now promises more prizes, a social network and a more explicit link to IAC's Ask.com search engine. I, for one, am excited to have the opportunity to never visit the new site as much as I did the old one. [TechCrunch]