That it didn’t come out earlier is a surprise…InfoSpace, among the few independent medium-sized search players left in the market (well, possibly the only one), is being bandied around by bankers as an M&A target. This is speculation for now, at least as far as this story goes, and INSP’s name consistently pops up in the pitch books of bankers looking to drum up merger deals.
The company’s two division, search and mobile, are in constant state of flux, much like the rest of the industry. I’ve written extensively about INSP’s mobile efforts here, and also about the near-decimation of its top management in the mobile division. But it is building back up, having hired Stephen Davis, till now the president of Granada America, as the head of its mobile unit. That said, the future of mobile aggregators is still very much in the air…
Its search division has been doing OK, based on its directory and paid search revenues, which have been on an uptick.
The asking price could go upward of $1 billion to as much as $1.5 billion and there aren’t that many players with that kind cash to throw for what essentially is a second-tier search and mobile company. (Well, you could have said the same thing about AskJeeves…). The only buyer which comes to mind: News Corp…it has the money, and has also said that it is finalizing on its search strategy “within weeks”. Rupert Murdoch also mentioned about close to buying a search engine in Q2 conference call. The mobile unit could help Lucy Hood move beyond mobisodes too…
Related:
— InfoSpace Profits Increase, Second Half Expected To be Sluggish
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