Ask.com buys About.com for $300M (opens in new tab)

All this hate for about.com just goes to show how much of a bubble some of you guys' internet activity exists in. As far as "content farms" go, they are very good at what they do. The quality of their articles have always been very well done (for the information I was looking for). I never got the feeling of landing on an SEO spammer site when I landed about.com. Actually, I used to spend quite a lot of time on about.com many years ago. Their sections are more than just content farm pages, they're also communities centered around specific topics. Think reddit without the childish memes and BS. The quality of discussions there were always much higher than you'd find on most popular places on the web today.

Much value exists on the internet outside of the techcrunch echo chamber. Dismiss it at your own peril.

Business Insider has more details here:

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-much-money-the-new-...

Revenues for About.com have been steadily declining. It's not surprising that the NYT dumped it. I'm just surprised that there was a bidding war over it.

These organizations are both so far removed from my life that you could have switched their names in the title and it would have had the same impact

I'm constantly amazed at how often I stumble upon About.com's material, even for topics well covered by more reputable sites. When I think of About.com, I think of junk content just barely better than Yahoo Answers...but some sections do have a wide breadth of content that you'd think would be too technical of minutiae for About.com

Here's their Ruby site: http://ruby.about.com/

Note: I can't say the quality of the technical writing is good. I'm just surprised they try to do so much at all, given the number of great technical blogs and free references out there (nevermind, ahem, Stack Overflow). It just goes to show that About.com's content strategy seems to be very lackadaisical

So... A search engine with obnoxious and intrusive ads is going to buy a mostly mediocre content site with obnoxious and intrusive ads and we're supposed to be happy and use this stuff?

This will become the Viacom of the internet... Content without content?

I worked there and lived through the Primedia and NYT acquisition. The fact that they have sold this company this many times is amazing. The major equity holders probably cant believe their own luck.

One change to the Google SERP ranking algorithm is going to ruin their day.

Its funny when you think about it because you never realize how important that site is for many people who aren't as savvy as the rest of you all.

Gotta remember that for every person who uses the web, there is someone who knows even less about it.

There is a niche for everyone. Literally.

Some background: there was a month-long bidding war between answers.com and IAC (ask.com) for about.com[1]. I wonder how things went since IAC's offer[2]. Did Answers upped their offer? Did it went personal and they left the table? One can wonder.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/27/technology/times-about/?hpt=...

[2] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/21/us-nyt-about-sale-...

This is the first time I'm wishing for an acquisition to shut a product down.

I am amazed Ask.Com is making enough money to fund a 300M purchase... who uses Ask.Com????

Who realized that Ask.com was successful enough to buy someone else for $300M? Wow.