About.com (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
NY Internet company IAC has submitted an offer of over $300 million to buy About.com from The New York Times, according to Reuters. This offer comes after the recent bid of $270M that the Times Co. received from Answers.com. It has been speculated that IAC would likely look to combine About.com with Ask.com, an IAC site that would leverage the content posted on About.com to answer questions that appear on Ask.com.
On August 8 the Times Co did not name specific parties it was speaking with but according to Reuters did say they were, “engaged in discussions regarding the potential sale of its About Group.”
About.com has more than 900 “topic sites,” that are geared to show up high in search results. The site makes money by selling advertising against their content. Last month, the Times Co valued the About group at $195m. The company originally paid $410 million in 2004 for About.com. The site began a steady decline after Google made some changes to its search algorithm.
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