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Each week, David and Tom Gardner play "Buy, Sell, or Hold?" with a personality from the business or celebrity world, asking not about stocks, but about happenings in the world. The question they pose to their guests: If these things were stocks, would you buy, sell, or hold -- and why?

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By David Gardner and Tom Gardner
May 21, 2003

When many of us think about searching for something on the Internet, we think Google or Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO). But there's another search engine asking for your business: Ask Jeeves (Nasdaq: ASKJ), a company valued at around $500 million with a stock that has risen from under $2 one year ago to over $12 today. David and Tom recently asked CEO Skip Battle some buy, sell, or hold questions.

Tom: Let's play our game. Skip, we're going to present you with a person, something going on in society, and we're going to ask you if it were a stock would you be buying, selling, or holding and a sentence or two about why. We'll begin with, buy, sell, or hold Google?

Battle: Buy. They're a terrific company at the early stages of a market that is going to be just outstanding.

David: Next one up, he's another butler... buy, sell, or hold the butler Paul Hogan from Joe Millionaire?

Tom: Is there a marketing opportunity there?

Battle: (laughter) We may update the butler, but we haven't spoken to Mr. Hogan. I will hold frankly because I'm not sure whether to buy or sell.

Tom: There's a lot of controversy about whether there is any real business here or not in the minds of a lot of people. Buy, sell, or hold the future of online advertising?

Battle: Oh, that's a buy. Online advertising in the nature of paid listings that show up when you are doing a search is, I think, quite literally the only place that I know of where advertising is uniformly assistive to the user instead of interruptive. That's a buy.

David: Following up, then. I'm curious, Skip... buy, sell, or hold pop-up ads on the Web.

Battle: Sell.

David: Why?

Battle: They are very annoying and very interruptive and typically they are not related to the string of the conversation. So, we've sold them off the site -- you don't find them anymore on our site.

David: And to close it out here, last one up: It's something else we like to ask about mainly because we have one sitting on our desks here. Buy, sell, or hold the Magic Eight Ball?

Battle: Oh, I would definitely buy the Magic Eight Ball. I think serendipity is very, very good in life.

David: And the Magic Eight Ball is an embodiment thereof. Skip Battle is the CEO of Ask Jeeves. Thanks for playing the game.

Battle: It's been a pleasure.