Overture Quietly Becomes a Competitor of MSN & Yahoo

Is Merging FAST & AltaVista - Introducing Web Search by end of '03

[martinibuster]

According to their Press Release [businesswire.com]

Overture expects to integrate the FAST and AltaVista paid inclusion products into one common product within the next 90 days, as well as introduce Web search before the end of 2003...

Overture also said it plans to integrate AltaVista and FAST's serving centers as it moves to an integrated product and technology platform for Web search.

They will also be unveiling "Content Match", a service that will allow businesses to place contextual advertising on relevant content pages, and allow Overture to lessen it's dependence on Yahoo & MSN.

I guess this means they're moving into DoubleClick's territory.

[jeremy goodrich]

And into Google's new territory :) Though I thought that Overture was the first to announce it, Google did release it first.

Still, Overture should have a pretty incredible product by year end, after reading a bit from their CTO - he seems to have done quite a bit of work on the algorithmic side of search / published a number of papers.

Competition is what makes the business fun.

[Learning Curve]

Great find, martinibuster! A must read.

[martinibuster]

I wonder where they'll be showing these "Contextual Ads?"

Do you think this has anything to do with their recent Gator Search Scout deal?