LONDON, May 15 /PRNewswire/ --

- Transaction Grows Ask.com's User Base and Strengthens Its Position in 
the General Search Market

- This Acquisition is Likely To Grow the Ask Network's User Base by More
Than 9% in the UK.

- In the UK, Neilsen NetRatings Reports That Lexico's Brands Have a Base 
of 800,000 Unique Users per Month, While the Ask Search Network Receives 8.4
Million Monthly Unique Users in the UK (Source: Neilsen NetRatings UK, March
08).

Ask.com (http://www.ask.com), a leading search engine and wholly-owned
business of IAC (Nasdaq: IACI), today announced an agreement to acquire
Lexico Publishing Group LLC - the owner of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and
Reference.com, in an all-cash transaction. More than half a billion monthly
worldwide searches consist of dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopedia
queries, according to comScore.

The Lexico acquisition will grow the Ask Network user base to more than
145 million unduplicated monthly unique users (UUs) worldwide, an increase of
11%, according to March 2008 comScore data. This would rank the Ask Network
as the 9th largest Web property in the world - ahead of Apple Inc. and
Facebook - in monthly worldwide UUs (comScore World Metrix, March 2008).
Ask.com and Lexico's demographics are nearly identical, creating strong
potential for cycling traffic between both companies' user bases.

"Lexico is a lean and fast-growing business with rapid top- and
bottom-line growth, and is a natural addition for Ask.com," said Jim Safka,
CEO of Ask.com. "More than 30 percent of all searches conducted on Ask.com
are in the reference category. In fact, 'dictionary' was the second-most
searched term on Ask.com in 2007. At the same time, Lexico's consumers
frequently seek out a search engine immediately before and after using one of
Lexico's sites. This acquisition expands Ask.com's reach and aligns perfectly
with our customers' needs."

Lexico's key strengths include:

- 15.6 M monthly UUs, growing 29% year-over-year (comScore, March 2008)

- Lexico sites grew three times faster than the global search market, 
which grew 9.5% year-over-year (comScore, March 2008)

-  Profitable, high double-digit growth for the past two years

-  88% of traffic consists of users who directly type Lexico sites' URLs 
into their browsers, demonstrating brand strength and minimal reliance on 
intermediary sites

"I can't imagine a better home for Lexico sites than Ask.com, given its
leadership in search technology and product innovation," said Brian Kariger,
CEO and Co-Founder of Lexico. "This integration will give the Lexico sites a
better consumer experience and even more useful for finding answers."

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The transaction remains subject to
customary closing conditions.

About Ask.com

Ask.com, a wholly-owned business of IAC (NASDAQ: IACI), is one of the 
leading general search engines on the Internet. The Ask Network of sites has 
more than 130 million worldwide unique monthly users according to March 2008
comScore data. Ask.com syndicates its search technology and advertising
solutions to a network of affiliate partners.

Lexico Publishing Group, LLC

Founded in 1995, Lexico Publishing Group, LLC is a leading provider of 
free online reference services including Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and
Reference.com. Lexico was recently named one of America's 500 fastest-growing
private companies by Inc. Magazine, and has been called "the best general
English-language dictionary online" by Web Guide magazine. Lexico Publishing
provides Dictionary.com Word of the Day Mailing List, a daily e-mail
vocabulary lesson; Thesaurus.com, the award-winning online version of Roget's
New Millennium(tm) Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases; Reference.com, an
encyclopedia, almanac, and general reference guide; and CleverKeys(R), free
software that gives instant access to definitions and synonyms from Windows
and Macintosh programs. Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com
combined to serve more than 28 million unique visitors as of March 2008. The
Word of the Day Mailing List has more than 1 million subscribers.

http://www.ask.com