Ask Jeeves (ASKJ) entering China Internet search market (conf call quotes)

Steve Berkowitz, CEO of Ask Jeeves (ticker: ASKJ) discussed the international benefits of combining with IAC (ticker: IACI), in its acquisition announcement earlier today:

....on international expansion....and this is again another asset that comes along with IAC. Our opportunity to move into China. Our technologies are totally enabled for those countries.

(Quotes are from the CCBN StreetEvents transcript.)

Quick thought: Despite IACI's China presence owing to its majority-owned travel services company, eLong (ticker: LONG), ASKJ will be facing well-established competitors in the Internet search market from Baidu (ticker: BIDU) and Google (ticker: GOOG). For more on Baidu, see here.