Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor to merge into one big recommendation website

By Lulu Chang Published May 2, 2017

Patience has finally paid off for media company IAC, which has successfully acquired Angie’s List after two years of negotiations. IAC, the parent company of popular sites like HomeAdvisor, will add the recommendations website to its portfolio, and will combine the two services into one publicly traded company to be known as ANGI Homeservices.

So don’t worry about comparing prices anymore between the electrician you found on Angie’s List versus the one you found on HomeAdvisor — now, they’re one and the same.

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IAC, which owns a diverse set of websites and apps (including Tinder), has made a number of bids for Angie’s List over the years. And while the review site held out for awhile, the competition posed from new rivals like Facebook, Handy, and even Amazon Home Services apparently proved too much to bear. But with a new parent company, Angie’s List may have a new future. After all, as Bloomberg pointed out, HomeAdvisor is actually IAC’s fastest growing division, with revenue up 38 percent last year as compared to the year prior.

IAC CEO Joey Levin noted that combining Angie’s List with HomeAdvisor will only stoke the flames. “What Angie’s List adds is fuel on both sides of the marketplace,” he told Bloomberg. “That improves the service experience — consumers get faster and higher-quality responses.” He added, “Home services is one of the last commerce categories where the vast majority of the market is still offline. That’s a huge opportunity,” Levin said.

The deal ought to be complete by the end of 2017, and while Bloomberg reports that job cuts are “likely,” the hope is that many former Angie’s List employees will simply move over to HomeAdvisor. Chris Terrill, the current CEO of HomeAdvisor, will lead the new company, while Angie’s List leader Scott Durchslag is said to be staying on at least until the deal closes.

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