Unless you already have a major foothold in the search engine market – or an amazing, disruptive technology that can make the world take notice – there isn't much point in staying. Competing with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is hard enough, even when you're Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) or Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) ... and, apparently, when you're IAC/InterActive Corp (NASDAQ: IACI). Barry Diller is ready to give up Jeeves, but only if asked nicely.

Diller's presence in the search space is Ask.com, ranked #4 behind Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing. With a substantial gap between first and second, fourth barely registers at all. Ask.com has only a 2% U.S. market share, according to Hitwise, more than 60 percentage points behind the industry leader.

DOW JONES & COMPANY (NYSE: DJ)

Could it happen? Could News Corporation (NYSE: NWS) pull its offer? They could, and the fear is absolutely there. That's why the stock has fallen. For one, the Bancroft family, which controls the majority of Dow Jones' shares, hasn't formally accepted Rupert Murdoch's $5B, $60 a share offer. And no one else has come forward with a competing bid. But it does seem that both sides are moving together in the same direction. Okay, but somebody should make up their mind -- either way -- and stop fiddling around.

EXPEDIA INC (NASDAQ: EXPE), IAC/INTERACTIVECORP (NASDAQ: IACI)

Barry Diller is back at it. The chairman and CEO of IAC/InteractiveCorp, who is also chairman of the board and a senior advisor to Expedia, is working to take online travel firm Expedia private at $30 a share. Part of any deal will involve Expedia's TripAdvisor being spun off with about 400 jobs being lost in that shuffle.

PENN NATIONAL GAMING INC (NASDAQ: PENN)

After many, many laps around the track, this race is over, as race track and casino operator Penn agreed to be acquired today by Fortress Investment Group LLC (NYSE: FIG) and private equity firm Centerbridge Partners. All cash, baby, in a deal worth $8.9B that includes $2.8B of assumed debt. Everyone to the Winner's Circle.

This post is written as part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst of 2006. Vote for Barry Diller, or to check out the other overpaid CEOs.

I'm sorry, but I so totally win. What I mean to say is, Barry Diller so totally wins. He is the undisputed worldwide best freakin' ever King of the Overpaid!

There are many reasons someone might see fit to award their company's CEO a Whole Lot of Money. Perhaps that CEO oversaw a banner year for the company, with record profits and growth in sales and maybe the launch of a whole new enterprise. Maybe that CEO got named as Most Powerful this or Most Influential that. Maybe the CEO played less golf than any other CEO in the whole U.S. of A. Maybe -- this company might award its CEO, say, $10 or $20 million in salary and bonuses and another $20 or $40 million in stock compensation. I mean, that would be a lot of money for a job well done, right?

Ha ha. Hahahaha. HAHAHAHAHA! That's Barry Diller laughing at you. Because in one year, as CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ:IACI), during which by all accounts his company did a whole lotta nothing, he made: $295 million.

More than four times the next-most-highly-paid CEO for 2005. That doesn't even count the stock options from Expedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPE), which he spun off during the year, which by one calculation has Diller clocking in at nearly $500 million.

What does IAC/InterActive do? Mostly, it owns the Home Shopping Network, with lots of other little properties like Match.com, Ticketmaster, Evite, Citysearch, and LendingTree. Actually these are mostly really great companies but I think for pay like this Diller should at the very least be hosting the overnight cubic zirconia and Bedazzler marathon on HSN once a week.

Color me surprised. Along with the rest of the investing world, I was happily wandering around, lulled to contentness by the belief that the highest-paid CEO was the nice, boring Eugene Isenberg of Nabor Industries Ltd. (NYSE:NBR). And why wouldn't I believe it?

Well, mostly, because it's not true. IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ:IACI), you see, filed the proxy indicating its CEO's pay later than most companies. And the end result? IAC CEO Barry Diller blows poor Eugene out of the water. Eugene? $71.4 million (that's a lot Eugene! congrats!) Barry on the other hand:

$295. Million. Dollars.

What did Barry Diller do for this money (which was mostly stock options)? Well, during 2005, the year covered by the executive pay survey, his company spun off Expedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPE), the online travel site, which was -- I suppose -- a useful thing (although the spin-off's stock is down 30% this year). Stock in IACI declined during 2005, 7%, and while operating income improved by almost four times in 2005, it was still a quite-modest $868.2 million.

And, as this article points out: if you add in stock options from Expedia, Barry Diller pulled in $469.7 million.

I think we can slice and dice the numbers however we like, but none of us are ever going to believe that he's worth that much. The Home Shopping Network is a fascinating slice of Americana, a weird, wacky and wild-eyed universe in which Midwestern grandmas discuss their impending purchases of lawn ornaments and appliqued baby sweaters with highly made-up wannabe "Personalities." An unqualified Wall Street success it's not, and I, for one, vow never to buy anything from HSN again.

That doesn't mean I won't watch the scrapbooking marathon ...

Ever hear of Ask.com? The search website formerly known as Ask Jeeves was purchased by Barry Diller's InterActive Corp. last year. IAC has a habit of turning around distressed companies in the throes of losing marketshare. Can it work the same magic with Ask.com any time soon? This Fortune article, "Ask.com: Google's up-and-coming rival," seems to think it can.

But while Ask.com may display all relevant content to the web searcher before displaying any kind of advertising, does this make a business model work long-term? Google has success by displaying ads (very relevant in many cases) directly next to content after a search is performed. But the ads are non-obtrusive and in most cases, very relevant to the search at hand. Hence, they work as a business model -- a billion-dollar business model.

Ask.com's search features intuitively are better than Google's. A search brings up a good list of close-context search results that the searcher may be interested in, as opposed to a simple index of the entire web that Goggle produces for a search result. But Google's becoming more personalized as well -- search for the word "recipes" and you'll see some new drop-down boxes that allow the searcher to drill further into a specific search.

Ask.com wants to build a "better car" instead of Google's "faster car." Instead of "more revenue per search", Ask.com wants to make "more money through more searches." This is well and good. But taking marketshare from Google while branding Ask.com as a superior service is not going to be easy. This may be one of Diller's hardest battles to date.