“Ask captures a promising search and ads space with image sharing service Photobucket.”

New York -- High on the turf of a match-up between Getty Images and Yahoo-owned Flickr, IAC/InterActiveCorp.’s Ask.com, a leading search engine, announced that it now powers Photobucket.com, a leading standalone photo and video-sharing site, with its search technology under a new multiyear strategic agreement between the companies, Ask.com said Thursday.

Dailymotion, DoubleClick, AltaVista all appear on resume, too.”

AOL has appointed an ex-Google executive to help head up its Bebo social media network.

AOL’s Bebo considerably appears to be growing a little more powerful in terms of personnel; like Yahoo, Google has now become a target for talent acquisition over the past years, although it is not seizing directly from a certain search giant, the social network’s newest hire acted as an exec at Dailymotion, and some time before that, Google.

London -- AOL has made another advance in its bid to become a portal destination, through a deal with social music site Last.fm by creating AOL Radio in Europe with a number of new features.

“Chasing on its recent pact between AOL and CBS Radio in the US, the company has now opted to target Last.fm’s 21 million global visitors.”

San Francisco -- Ask.com, the top Internet search division of IAC, last week finalized an all-cash deal of the previously announced agreement to purchase Lexico Publishing Group LLC, the owner of popular reference sites Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com.

Ask.com, had disclosed the all-cash transaction on May 15, 2008. Financial terms of the deal, which closed Thursday, were not released.

Ask.com said the agreement would increase its monthly audience by around 15 million users to 145 million, an increase of 11 percent.

New York -- In a move that reflects a new strategy, Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp which owns Ask.com has acquired Lexico Publishing Group, an Internet media company that owns sites that includes Dictionary.com in its latest effort to distinguish itself from online search leader Google and other much larger rivals.

“A similar attempt last year was made by rival site Answers.com, but the deal eventually fell through.”

Ask.com, the Oakland-based search engine, unveiled a service today for everyone who hates to ask for directions…

“Ask.com, everybody’s favorite underdog search engine, has long made great efforts in local/mobile areas. Last May, for example, they launched Ask Mobile GPS with Sprint phones. Now they are announcing the first search-engine–sponsored voice directions on mobile phones…”

A class action suit covering alleged victims of click fraud and other invalid or improper clicks on online advertisements purchased from IAC Search & Media Inc. and Ask Jeeves Inc. (now Ask.com) may be resolved by a proposed settlement announced Wednesday.

“Seems Lane’s Gifts are not the only ones getting money back from LookSmart and Ask for click fraud, letters were sent out for the class action suit that both companies are trying to put behind them.”

Both letters written by the same law firm and were from the suit lodged in the Circuit Court of Miller County, Arkansas.