A rumor peddled by Peter Kafka of Silicon Alley Insider in a article sent to press Friday morning, concerning IAC’s alleged consideration of the replacement of Ask’s search engine technology, Teoma, with the vastly more popular system employed by Google, has effectively been debunked. Reuters has now reported that source “familiar with the matter” has declared any such purported murmurs as “incorrect.”
Ask is in a rather odd situation at the moment. While its share of the search market has grown somewhat in the last few months, a likely result of the hard-charging advertising efforts it has unleashed as of late, its parent company, IAC, is traversing quite the rough patch. Great trouble could brew over IAC’s very public dispute with Liberty Media, its present controlling shareholder, which Michele Gershberg of Reuters, in relaying word delivered by various analysts, has said will be headed to a contentious trial next month. Such a clash could make for an unsavory distraction for IAC as it takes on the task of furthering the painstaking growth of Ask, following many quarters of relatively unsubstantial increases. Already IAC has employed a very large financial investment leveraged to push Ask into a greater gain-making trajectory, and though numbers are on the ascent, it’s arguable that the returns may not be viewed as worthwhile as many had hoped or foreseen.