Ask.com spells out deal for Dictionary.com

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 4 Jul 2008 at 08:14

Ask.com has closed an all-cash deal to acquire Lexico Publishing Group, the owner of popular reference sites Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com.

Lexico of Long Beach, California, was founded in 1995, starting with Dictionary.com. A year later Lexico introduced Thesaurus.com and in 2002 began Reference.com. For users who know what they mean but can't recall the term, it also offers a Reverse Dictionary.

Ask.com said the deal expands its monthly audience by around 15 million users to 145 million, an increase of 11%. Based on March traffic data from comScore, that would make Ask.com the ninth-largest web property globally.

Dictionary.com is the fifth most-visited reference site among US web users, according to data from online audience measurement site Hitwise.

Terms of the merger were not disclosed.