lizardx - 8:55 pm on Jan 8, 2005 (gmt 0)

webzilla:
<<<
MSN has appointed Overture to supply the sponsored search results on its US, Canadian, European and Asian websites, until the end of June 2006. The one-year extension of a deal, which has been running since 2001, will keep Overture on its toes, but surely at some point MSN will choose or buy an ad broker that is not owned by a direct competitor.
>>>
full story [theregister.co.uk]

By the way, this is why I still can't use msn beta, I keep trying to get real answers for random searches like this one: msn search extends pay per click contract
and it doesn't give me the right answer. This is why I am pretty much positive, unless MS is about to make a huge mistake, that MSN beta is not ready for prime time even if it is working well on shorter search phrases, which I think it is in certain areas, but not all. For a while I thought they were closer, and was stickying msndude about errors, but I'm going to stop, they aren't close, although it's getting there piece by piece, but it still can't handle any type of searches that are very complex or push its limits, or go slightly beyond what the alpha testers had probably focused on.

I have still been unable to use msn beta for real world complex searches, it usually doesn't last more than 1 or two searches before I have to give up and use google or yahoo. I try though, one day it will be ready, that day just isn't today.

By the way, make absolutey sure you block beta.search.msn.com cookies when testing your keywords, the results begin to get tailored to your searches, and the positions change. This cookie blocking applies to all search engines.

Here's my utterly worthless prediction:
MSN is supposed to go live june or july. Like all major MS releases and projects, it will be late. MSN will go live next fall.