Maybe I shouldn’t put such faith in The Guardian’s political coverage (see below), when they get a business story as wrong as this:
| Google under pressure as Diller buys Ask Jeeves |
| IAC/InterActiveCorp, the American online conglomerate run by the media mogul Barry Diller, took another step towards web domination yesterday with the $1.85bn (£1bn) acquisition of the internet search engine Ask Jeeves. |
| The all-share deal is further evidence of increasing confidence in the potential of internet advertising and search engines. It will also position IAC directly against the likes of Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft… |
| Mr Diller said that Ask Jeeves, one of the few internet site engines surviving from the dotcom boom, “has the potential to become one of the great brands on the internet and beyond”. Analysts said the deal could raise concerns for Google, which generates about two-thirds of Ask Jeeves’ revenues by brokering advertising deals for the site. |
Where to start? “Step towards web domination”? “Raise concerns for Google”? Tell me why Google — or Yahoo or Microsoft — will give a moment’s thought to a company that has 3% and dropping of the search market, and which has never produced decent search results.
I thought The New York Times’s purchase of About.com was the height of folly, but this is worse.
I don’t want to be accused of complacency, but here’s an unremarkable headline: Tory revival runs into the sand.
Felix Salmon has an excellent piece on the Wolfowitz nomination, deconstructing The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed piece.
Iain Duncan Smith, the ludicrous former Tory leader, has a weighty op-ed piece in today’s New York Times. It’s an odd sensation to see a politician who no one would give the time of day to in Britain given important editorial space in the US.
That said, his point about the dangers of elective dictatorship (as can happen when one party has a large majority in the UK parliament) is perfectly valid. I did think, however, that it was dissembling for him to make no reference whatsoever to his own party’s consistent abuse of its majority during its ascendency in the Thatcher years.