Diller has submitted an offer in excess of $300 million to buy the About.com information website from the New York Times. IAC's bid is above the $270 million offer that the Times preliminarily accepted from Answers.com. This site was backed by private equity firms Summit Partners and TA Associates. Answers.com President Peter Horan previously served as head of About.com.
About.com consists of more than 900 "topic sites," which feature articles on everything from parenting and cooking to travel and technology that are geared to appear high in search results. The portal makes its money by selling advertising against its content. However About.com sank after Google made changes to its search algorithm designed to return high-quality results.
The Times wrote down the value of the group by $195 million. The company originally paid $410 million for About.com in 2005.
$300 million outbids the Answers.com
About.com is at the centre of a bidding war which Barry Diller's IAC/Interactivecorp appears to be winning.
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Nick Farrell
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