The latest from TechCrunch
- Qwiki Wins TechCrunch Disrupt: Information Consumption To Be Disrupted
- Barry Diller: Ask.com Has No Value Inside Of IAC
| Qwiki Wins TechCrunch Disrupt: Information Consumption To Be Disrupted | Top |
| The votes have been tallied. The judges have weighed in. A battlefield of twenty-seven startups was whittled down to a final, elite group of seven . And now the winner has been chosen: Qwiki has taken the top prize at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco. In addition to a $50,000 grand prize, the company has just been handed the Disrupt Cup, taking over possession from Disrupt NYC winner Soluto . Upon receiving the cup, CEO Doug Imbruce exclaimed, “Let’s change the world!” Taking the runner-up spots are CloudFlare and Pinger , both of which were also very impressive. Qwiki climbed above the rest by offering a new way to consume information: text, audio, video, and images melded together in a seamless interface, generating a dynamic movie of whatever you search for. It really does seem like something from the future, and it’s only going to get better. Make sure to check out our full coverage of each of these stellar companies: Qwiki Just May Be The Future Of Information Consumption. And It's Here Now. CloudFlare Wants To Be A CDN For The Masses (And Takes Five Minutes To Set Up) Pinger Now Turns Your iPod Touch Into A Free Cell Phone And while only one startup can claim rights to the Disrupt Cup at a time, this was an incredibly solid field of companies, and we want to reiterate that it was a very close race. Many of the companies that took part in the Startup Battlefield are going to be doing great things. In addition to the Disrupt Cup, some special awards were also given: Yume for Best Marketing Strategy – Checkpoints Perkins Coie – CloudFlare Greylock Partners Disruptive Product – Qwiki Greylock Partners Business Model – Pinger Omidyar Network – Sumazi Microsoft BizSpark – Badgeville | |
| Barry Diller: Ask.com Has No Value Inside Of IAC | Top |
| Many of us may have forgotten that Ask.com is a search engine just like Google and Bing. It seems that IAC’s Barry Diller , who owns Ask.com, seems to have no memory of Ask’s value as well. Diller sat down with Michael Arrington today at TechCrunch Disrupt, and spoke candidly about the future of Ask.com. Says Diller, “I don’t think Ask.com is going to gain search share; everyone copied us.” He added that Ask is not competitive with Google at all. When an audience member asked whether Ask would be more valuable outside of IAC rather than within the network; Diller quipped: Ask has no value inside of IAC, so why would it add value as a standalone site? He also said that IAC hasn’t been able to grow Ask the way he thought the company would be able to. To Ask’s benefit, he did add that if you enter a natural language question into the search portal, Ask.com will give you a good answer. The company has tried to expand into the Q&A realm, recently launching a Quora-like feature to the search portal. Ask, which was originally known as AskJeeves, was acquired by IAC in 2005 for $1.85 billion. UPDATE: IAC and Barry Diller has issued this response: "I did not say that Ask has no value inside of IAC, period. In response to a specific question, I said that many of our assets are not ‘valued’ in the stock, and Ask is one of them…I was asked specifically if Ask would be better off with us or another company or standing alone. In the context of that question, I said that since it wasn’t valued in IAC – like so many of our businesses, because we have so many – that it would only be ‘valued’ stand alone." UPDATE 2: It was Google’s Don Dodge is person who posed the question to Diller; his interpretation seems to be the same as mine. Others reported the same response as well. UPDATE 3: We looked at the video of Diller’s interview and he did definitely say Ask “has no value inside IAC,” but he was arguing more that the stock market doesn’t ascribe any value to it. Here is the full exchange, which starts at about the 24:30 mark (bold added for emphasis): Q: “Do you believe Ask is worth more as a separate public company, or as part of IAC or as part of another company” Diller: “Well you can never tell if it is worth more as part of another company because you don't know what that other company would do with it. But as a standalone, I don't think it would be, no. The truth is it has no value inside IAC , so I would think that it might have value standing alone. Because if you do a sum of the parts of IAC as against a private market value of any of these assets, and particularly Ask, I don't think anybody ascribes any meaningful value to Ask.com “ Good? You know, wherever you like. We could stand, we can, that's good. Whatever you, whatever you would like. I'm your guest. You said, I could ask you anything. No speaker at this event has actually said that to me except for you. What a great invitation. But, I wonder whether I should say FU at the beginning of this or wait for you to provoke me. I prefer you get it out of the way up front, and then we can, you know. Alright then. You had to bring that up. Consider it said. All right. There went all the soft balls. Okay, lets jump right in. Google or Facebook? Who's the biggest threat to internet freedom? Well I don't think either are a threat to internet freedom. I think the only thing that's a threat to internet freedom is the possibility that we won't have net neutrality. That we won't have it actually clarified into law, or rule, by the FCC, which I think would be a tragedy for everybody who participates on the internet. So, that's the danger. The danger is, that you've got telecommunication forces that have always captured distribution. T his is the first time, miracle, that we've got distribution absolutely press a button, publish it and a consumer gets it. That's a miracle. We have to protect it and telecommunication companies, cable companies, Telcos, et cetera, want to do, of course, what they've a lways done which is be on the...be there with a toll bridge taking tolls and controlling it. We don't got that now. We should make certain we'll never have it. Do you...first of all, yes, I agree. Do you think... I'm sorry, I want to do one more thing. Thank you. That's a crowd-pleaser right there. That all of you have to get out there and start arguing for this strongly. We have a Republican opposition to this that says don't make any rules for anything because you will inhibit investment. which is, of course absurd, the return that the cable companies are getting on their internet is enough to make investment in whatever amounts are necessary. So, we've got opposition to it and we don't have enough energy from people who are absolutely, it is their next -- it is the lives of you all and the people are coming after you who you gotta go protect now. What's at stake? So, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be whatever but nevertheless. No, I like it when you do that. What's at stake? Is American competitiveness in technology at stake? Is it just good, the good -- What's the good of the people, what is it? Why does it matter so much on a big scale? It matters, first of all, I mean, there are two parts of this. One part is we've got to unleash the FCC which is now kind of bogged down in this -- everything that's bogs everything down in our dysfunctional government but the FCC has got to get broadband much more or developed in the United States, be competitive with the 16th in the world. It is shameful, we are the leaders in the world. Obviously in technology, it is almost all of our invention that has spurred all of the developments and technology all over the world. We've got to get broadband more developed in this country. We've got to get infrastructure done. The FCC's got to be unleashed to do that. They've got to get passed this net neutrality in order to do so. I believe because I think otherwise they're gonna, they're among almost hostage to all of the stuff that's going on. So that's why I think it's important. What about search neutrality? How related is it to net neutrality and how do you think about search neutrality? Well I think search neutrality, you know, and net neutrality to me is absolutely on the side of the Angels. Yeah. The search neutrality is not necessarily. Search neutrality right now essentially says that as essentially Google continues to I don't know if the right word develop it's businesses is accurate. But as Google begins to get vertically integrate. Sorry, to vertically use search. Yeah. In areas that pretty much they left to other people who were in those businesses. Up comes the issue of, all right, search neutrality. Should any search engine be able to buy us the results for its own surfaces? I don't think that's an issue. I don't think that's an issue of natural law, I think that's an issue of anti-trust law. And at some point that will be dealt with if it has reached the stage where it's deserving of being dealt with. I don't have any exposition on it. | |
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