Diller to buy Ask Jeeves, including Bloglines, for $2 Billion

The New York Times is reporting in Monday’s edition that Barry Diller’s IAC/Intercative is acquiring Ask Jeeves, including Ask’s recent acquisition Bloglines.

Diller, whose company is a variety of holdings including Expedia, Ticketmaster, Home Shopping Network, Match.com and CitySearch (includes lawyer bios from Martindale), through this buy is going after advertising spending on search sites. In addition they hope, by marrying a local-search business with a global search engine, to benefit from further growth in targeted keyword advertising.

For lawyers, it may mean sponsored links on Ask Jeeves for broad coverage will be needed. Diller may have the money to compete in the market dominated by Google and Yahoo. As for sponsored links on City Search, I don’t know if Martindale’s deal has an exclusive to lock individual law firms out.

By the way if there is any doubt about the importance of search engines, just look at this deal. Most of Ask Jeeves’s revenue comes from advertising that appears on its search sites through a contract with Google. Fourth-quarter profits and revenue at Ask Jeeves were $17.5 million and $86.1 million. The purchase price – $2 Billion.