The Ask Jeeves Bubble

(sub. req.): Barron’s burts the bubble again, this time Ask Jeeves’. “Can the stunning revival of Ask’s stock price continue? It seems hard to imagine, given the company’s already stretched valuation, the volatile and increasingly competitive nature of the search-engine business, the delicate competitor/partner relationship the company has with Google and the company’s need to outperform the relatively slow-growth search market to justify its huge multiple.”

And yes, before I forget, this is the bubble-bursting time of the year: everyone and their mother-in-law are doing stories on how the tech rally is inflated and how the Chines net portals valuations are not sustainable. Case in point: the latest cover story in Business 2.0 (sub. req.): Why This Tech Bubble Is About to Blow. Not that the stories are far off the mark, but I think we are, as journalists, over-compensating for our boom-time gullibility…

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