Barry Diller must be feeling pretty frustrated about the search business. When he bought the small but feisty Ask Jeeves three years ago he said his aim was to boost its traffic, partly by plugging it into all of IAC’s other websites. He even took a financial hit, slashing the number of sponsored listings carried on search results pages to make the service less off-putting.

The result? Ask.com (as it is now called) remains decidedly small and feisty. According to comScore, its share of the US search market was just over 5 per cent when IAC bought it: it’s now just below 5 per cent. That is despite a number of user interface innovations that have generally won it good reviews, including the latest "Ask3D" search results page.

Diller seems to have decided it’s high time for a different approach. Jim Lanzone is out as CEO (though his former boss is gracious enough to credit him with a turnaround at the search engine.) Ask.com will now be run by two executives from elsewhere in IAC - Jim Safka, a former CEO of Match.com, and Scott Garell, who had been running IAC’s consumer applications and portals business.

Diller made his reputation by proving, despite widespread doubts, that Fox could become a real contender as the fourth TV network in the US. So far, he has failed to do the same for Ask.com in the search business.

January 9th, 2008 in Internet | Permalink