ksal - 5:17 am on Oct 30, 2009 (gmt 0)

Ask has spent a lot of money trying to grow their traffic and it hasn't worked over the long run - the users are temporary. Diller finally figured that out. It's milking time for Ask and he'd rather just cash out than milk it. Especially if Microsoft is willing to pay a huge premium for a lot of traffic... and potentially a lot of intelligence if Google allows their ads to remain running on the site.

That's the real question... if you are Google, and Microsoft buys Ask (one of your top partners) do you allow the contract to be assumed?