Ask's former frontman
bears resemblance to Diller

The board of directors for the IAC announced yesterday that they would be splitting the company into five publicly-traded companies.

The five separate brands conceived in this decision are:

• The Home Shopping Network, both TV and online
• Ticketmaster
• Lending Tree
• Interval International, a marketplace of timeshares that includes CondoDirect, Resort Quest Hawaii and VacationSource.com
• IAC, which will house Ask.com, Bloglines, CitySearch, Evite, iWon, Match.com, BustedTees, and CollegeHumor

Investors are reportedly pleased with the decision to target each firm's focus.

Stock was up 9 percent this morning, which may also be fueled by another Monday announcement: IAC has renewed a five-year deal with Google to provide its sponsored search, valued at $3.5 billion.

The deal represents 80 to 85 percent of IAC's revenue.

Ask.com currently generates 10 percent of Google's ad revenues from partner sites, or about $100 million a quarter. The new deal estimates that figure to rise to $175 million per quarter.