Tag archive: Barry Diller

President-elect Barack Obama has announced he plans to nominate Julius Genachowski to head the Federal Communications Commission in his administration—a move that has been greeted by applause from media reformers and open media advocates. The FCC is currently run by Chairman Kevin Martin, whose tenure has not been without controversy: under Martin's watch, the FCC approved the merger of Sirius and XM satellite radio as well as… Read More

In a 310-page report titled “U.S. Internet: The End of the Beginning,” analyst Jeffrey Lindsay at teh wealth management firm Bernstein forecasts that Google and Amazon.com are the Internet companies best able to weather the current economic downturn, while some other major Internet players will be acquired or broken up into smaller pieces. The key differences? Google and Amazon have stated close to their original businesses and… Read More

In what might be most-generously described as an unexpected about-face, search engine Ask.com is apparently giving up its efforts to compete with search engines at Microsoft, Yahoo, and the ever-dominant Google, and instead will retool itself as a niche site focusing on offering information to married women seeking to better organize their lives. "Everyone at Ask is excited about our clear focus and the trajectory-changing results it… Read More

Major ticket broker TicketMaster has announced a definitive agreement to acquire popular online ticket reseller TicketsNow for an undisclosed amount. TicketMaster, a subsidiary of of Barry Diller's IAC media empire—which also runs search engine Ask.com and online dating service Match.com—will use the acquisition to give it a leg-up in the increasingly competitive ticket resale market. TicketMaster also plans to leverage its… Read More

After six years at the helm of search engine Ask.com, Jim Lazone is stepping down to join venture capital firm Redpoint Ventures. Taking over the top Ask.com top spot will be Jim Safka, who currently heads the Primal Ventures, the venture capital arm of Ask.com's parent company IAC, run by media entrepreneur Barry Diller. “Jim Lanzone was the principal executive responsible for Ask.com's turnaround over the last two… Read More

Ask Jeeves announced today that it will be following in the steps of search sites Google and Yahoo by introducing a sponsored advertising network in which companies participate in auctions to have their links associated with specific search requests. Google and Yahoo have been offering paid search listings for some time, and recently Microsoft's MSN announced plans for a similar advertising service. In paid listing services, companies… Read More