Around the Net

Diller Reflects On IAC Breakup

IAC chief Barry Diller discusses the decision to split the company into five entities, one of the Web industry's major stories of the year. Some felt the move was an admission that the media conglomerate model is destined to fail on the Web. Others felt it was smart to break up the disparate assets so they could focus more on their own businesses.

It's not that IAC's business model, which is to buy promising Web companies on the cheap and then turn them into profitable businesses using minimal staff, isn't working. It's that combined, many of its Web properties don't constitute a discernible whole. "We write nothing in stone," Diller says. "I mean, we're not Valley Girls--we don't change our opinion every hour and a half--but we're willing to say we've gone in the wrong direction. We don't look back, we don't care, we're very mistake-tolerant--as long as you don't keep repeating the same mistake."

For a man with such a rich media history, Diller casts a surprisingly modest figure when he discusses his IAC legacy. "I hope to leave it well," he says simply, suggesting that the bitter rivalry between himself and former boss Rupert Murdoch is behind him.

Read the whole story at New York Observer »

Next story loading loading..