Lexico bought by Ask.com

As a Dictionary.com Premium user I am a little sceptical to Ask.com’s acquisition of Lexico’s Reference.com brands. Now I enjoy high quality reference material without advertisements. But under Ask Network’s rule, I fear the days of advertisement free reference material will come to and end.

It will be a shame if Ask.com manages to screw up Reference.com, Dictionary.com, and Thesaurus.com. Ask.com says most of it searches is for reference material. So the acquisition makes sense for them. However, they also base their business model entirely on their advertisement deal with Google AdSense.

I hope Ask.com will leave Lexico mostly on it’s own, and rather integrate their new source of information into their search engine result pages. Like they do with other reference materials today. Alternatively, they might choose to heavily promote their new brands when users search for reference materials.

By the way, Dictionary.com Premium costs a little under ¤20 USD per year. So if you ever need an English dictionary or thesaurus/synonyms; go get yourself a premium account at Dictionary.com!

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