Ask.com Sponsors Rutgers University Team to Compete Today in the "Battle of the Brains" World Finals in Tokyo

March 15, 2007; 05:00 AM

Ask.com(R), a leading search engine and wholly-owned business of IAC (Nasdaq: IACI), today announced the company's sponsorship of the Rutgers University team competing in the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming World Finals, held today in Tokyo. Commonly referred to as the "Battle of the Brains," the International Collegiate Programming Competition is the world's most prestigious university competition in computing sciences and engineering. The Battle of the Brains pits the top university computer programmers in the world against their peers in an impressive, five-hour contest. The competition is hosted by the Association for Computing Machinery, an international scientific and educational organization dedicated to advancing the arts, sciences and applications of information technology.

As one of only 88 international collegiate teams to secure a spot in this week's World Finals, students from the Rutgers New Brunswick-Piscataway campus and two team coaches traveled to Japan to compete, courtesy of Ask.com. Other U.S. universities scheduled to compete include The California Institute of Technology, Cornell University, Harvard University, Duke University, The University of Texas at Austin and Stanford University, among others.

Ask.com's association with Rutgers University goes back to the innovation of its core ExpertRank technology, born out Rutgers by a study group in the Computer Science department. The ExpertRank ranking algorithm provides highly relevant search results by identifying the most authoritative sites on the Web. Based on social networking theory, ExpertRank goes beyond mere link popularity (which ranks pages based on the sheer volume of links pointing to a particular page) to determine popularity among pages considered to be authoritative on the topic of your search. This is known as subject-specific popularity. The result is world-class relevance that offers a unique editorial flavor compared to other search engines.

About Ask.com

A leading search engine on the Web, Ask.com combines world-class search technology with one-of-a-kind search tools to help people get what they are looking for faster. Ask.com sites include Ask.com US (http://www.Ask.com ), Ask.com Deutschland, Ask.com Espana, Ask.com France, Ask.com Italia, Ask.com Japan, Ask.com Nederlands and Ask.com UK. Additionally, Ask.com syndicates its search technology and advertising units to a network of affiliate partners. Ask.com is a division of IAC Search & Media, a wholly-owned business of IAC.