When many of us think about searching for something on the Internet, we think Google or Yahoo!
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.
