Lots of rumours over the past couple days including Apple pairing iTunes up with Google in some way. This caused Apple stock (APPL) to surge. Google search powering iTunes? Hmm, I like the possibilities there …

BL Ochman says she received a tip Thursday morning that Technorati was about to be sold to “a large search engine company.” Scoble has no idea who it is, so MSN is probably out (again). Yahoo has been buying up web properties like mad (Flickr, Konfabulator) so they very well could be in the hunt, but a few people are suggesting it might be InterActiveCorp (IACI) who bought Ask Jeeves.

Speaking of IACI — and this is not a rumour — InterActiveCorp shareholders just agreed to spin off Expedia (EXPE) shares:

After the transaction, slated to close the week of Aug. 8, IAC will have no ownership interest in Expedia. IAC will continue to operate under that name and focus on its Web properties including Match.com, Citysearch, LendingTree and the soon-to-be acquired Web search company Ask Jeeves Inc.

Back to Technorati.

I’ve been saying for some time that I believed Technorati’s strategy wasn’t to run a service long term but to be gobbled up by a bigger fish. Whomever this is that buys Technorati — if somebody buys Technorati — I sure hope they fix the darn thing. It has had scaling issues for quite some time. Lately, I haven’t been able to search on my domain without getting “sorry, we couldn’t complete your search because we’re experiencing a high volume of requests right now.”

Did this post make you go hmm?

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• InterActiveCorp pays $1.85 billion for Ask Jeeves
• Jeeves getting boot, may need Expedia for travel plans, match.com for loneliness
• Yahoo working on Technorati killer
• Ask Jeeves buys Excite Europe
• Ask Jeeves could be renamed
• Red, white and blank: the new Ask home page sans Jeeves