• Cnet, Thursday, June 11, 2009 12 PM

Last year, IAC/InterActive Corp. CEO Barry Diller split his oversize media conglomerate into five separate publicly traded businesses, with IAC remaining focused primarily on Web media brands like Citysearch, Match.com, Evite and Ask. Speaking at an industry conference Diller explained the reasoning behind the move: "We built up a fairly large number of disparate businesses," he said. "All of them had some form of interactivity, but they were all from selling mortgages to dating...It wasn't giving investors or commentators or anyone else a clear picture of what the company was."

Diller also declared that solely relying on advertising as a business model is not sustainable. "I absolutely believe that the Internet is passing from its free phase into a paid system," he said. "Inevitably, I promise you, it will be paid. Not every single thing, but everything of any value. Again, take commodity away from it." He noted that the wealth of free content on the Web was borne out of fear of piracy. "People were so frightened of not being dinosaurs, and baring their heads, and not having what happened to the music industry happen to them, they just slapped everything up on the Internet for free," he said. "That's an accidental historical moment that will absolutely be corrected."

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