Is Diller Looking to Dump Ask?

Back in September, IAC/InterActiveCorp Chairman Barry Diller sat onstage at Goldman Sach's Communacopia XVIII conference and said of his company's search engine, Ask.com, "It doesn't have a lot of share, but it has scale…. I think over time, it really can compete." (That quote comes via AOL Daily Finance's Jeff Bercovici.)

Yesterday, Diller was less effusive on IAC's third-quarter conference call. As quoted by the New York Post's Holly Sanders Ware, Diller told investors, "We have been asked a lot whether we are open to consolidating transactions in the area of search…. The answer is yes. And it is unlikely that we'd be the consolidator."

For those who don't speak mogul, that means IAC may be looking to sell the search engine. (Sanders Ware quotes an analyst who thinks Microsoft would be a logical buyer.)

According to data from the digital marketing company iCrossing (here reproduced by Search Engine Land), Google now controls 76.7 percent of U.S. search engine traffic. After that, Yahoo holds 11.1 percent, and Bing (which joined Yahoo in a 10-year partnership in July) has 8.21 percent. Ask.com was listed at just 0.41 percent.

Ask.com is one small part of IAC's holdings, which includes Match.com, Evite, Citysearch, Tina Brown's the Daily Beast, and, of course, PopularScreensavers.com, home of more than 6,400 images for your computer's desktop.

In April 2008, IAC launched RushmoreDrive.com, a search engine aimed at African American users. Even after a spate of publicity in Newsweek, NPR, the Wall Street Journal, and other news organizations, IAC closed the site in June 2009.

IAC's full earnings report can be found on its website. The company reported revenue of $336.6 million in the third quarter, down 9 percent from that time last year.