Barry Diller Offers NYT $300M For About.com
Barry Diller‘s IAC/Interactivecorp has offered the New York Times Co more than $300 million for the information site portal About.com, Reuters reports. That’s higher than the $270 million offer the NYT has preliminarily accepted from Answers.com, whose President Peter Horan previously served as head of About.com. The fortunes of About.com, which makes its money by selling ads against its content, have soured against competition from Google, so NYT Co wrote down the value of About by $195 million. NYT paid $410 million for About in 2005. The NYT has not solicited bids but IAC, Demand Media and others had approached the publisher, Reuters says, and interested buyers feel the price is low and can easily be matched. Despite IAC’s higher offer, the NYT has not responded. IAC wants to combine About.com with Ask.com which has evolved to a question-and-answer style service that could leverage About.com content.
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