Crazy ‘Net buy of the week

We thought the New York Times’ $410 million purchase of About.com in February was, frankly, nuts. Oh, yeah? Media mogul Barry Diller sees that and raises.

The financial world is all atwitter this morning with the news Diller’s Internet arm, IAC/InterActiveCorp, has offered to buy Ask Jeeves for $1.85 billion. As we wrote with the About.com news, “we sincerely hope that [figure is] in pesos or magic beans.”

Other IAC sites include Expedia, Citysearch, Match.com and Evite. We are so in the wrong business.

ETA: Wait, wait, wait. We figured it out. We were so slack-jawed over the $1.85 billion we forgot Barry Diller created Fox. This all makes sense now.