Following the IAC (NSDQ: IACI) press conference explaining today’s announcement that the company will split into five publicly held companies, I sat down for a brief chat with COO Doug Lebda.
What is IAC?: One of the key selling points for the split-up is that IAC can now be defined in a succinct manner, so I asked Lebda for the definition. Hopefully, Wall St. will be satisfied with: “IAC is (still) a multi-business consumer corporation consisting of more than 30 brands that all transact through the internet.”
Google (NSDQ: GOOG) deal: As Diller mentioned in a CNBC interview directly following the press conference, the new deal with Google is not just an extension of the old one. Lebda wouldn’t go into much detail on the enhancements that IAC thinks make it worth so much, but said the new arrangement “better aligned” the interests of both companies.
Acquisitions: Again, not surprisingly, the company won’t say anything about what kinds of acquisitions it has in mind. However, when pressed, Lebda offered: “The thing that I would highlight is the large number of startups (that the company has been involved with)”. He threw out Gifts.com and Garage Games as examples.
Content: As for where IAC stands on creating original content, Lebda offered the perhaps unsatisfying: “It depends on your definition of content… all of our web properties create content.” He then mentioned both search engine results and ServiceMagic (lead generation) as examples of IAC’s own content. For a more concrete example of how content fits into the IAC business, he discussed the addition of consumer shopping guides at Pronto.com, noting how the they increased the site’s standing within search engine rankings, while offering a better service to users.
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