Discovery gets into online search business with $250 million acquisition of HowStuffWorks

Set up nine years ago by North Carolina State University professor Marshall Brain, HowStuffWorks attracts over 11 million users from around the world and caters to a variety of topics.

The website has an editorial staff and rights to over 30,000 books, 800,000 images and more than 180,000 maps for its descriptions.

HowStuffWorks, which makes money from advertising on its site also recently moved into the social networking market by allowing users, who register with the site, to ask the online community questions and post answers to other users'' queries.

Discovery, which runs over 100 TV channels, including Animal Planet and The Science Channel, will use HowStuffWorks to showcase its existing library of video footage, uploading clips from its programmes into entries on the site.

Discovery also plans to create a HowStuffWorks-branded TV series to air daily on Discovery Channel from next summer.