The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

Diller's Time Seeks his search engine

1. Wither Wetherell

We can't blame Barry Diller for liking Ask Jeeves (ASKJ Quote).

The IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI Quote) chief surprised Wall Street this week by unveiling a $1.85 billion plan to buy the No. 5 search engine. He wasn't stingy with his praise. "We think that this merger, the relationship of the Ask service and IAC services, can create an everlasting interactive company that has enormous amounts of reach, traffic, service to customers, et cetera," Diller said in a Monday morning conference call.

But we think Diller likes Ask Jeeves -- which bills itself as an "easier, more intuitive way to search" via questions in "natural language" -- for another reason. It gives him the search results that he hopes will come true.

Six years ago, remember, Diller was similarly on the verge of buying into the search-engine business. Diller's company, then called USA Networks, was all set to buy No. 3 search engine Lycos in a complicated merger creating an e-commerce giant valued at $18 billion.

But the plan collapsed when Lycos shareholders -- led by CMGI (CMGI Quote) chief David Wetherell, who held a 20% stake -- revolted over price. Wetherell, who is now chairman at Waltham, Mass.-based CMGI, didn't return a call left Wednesday at his office.

Diller hasn't blamed Wetherell for the breakup, but to this day he maintains he wishes the Lycos deal had worked out. "I wish we had gotten it," Diller said Monday in a TV interview.

Understandably, though, Diller remains wary that the Ask Jeeves plan could go up in smoke as well. "We are not expecting, by the way, to have any more -- I should not say it, God knows what could happen -- but we're not expecting to have any more conference calls" in the near future, he told analysts on Monday's call. ...