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" Businesses using paid inclusion pay a fee to have their Web pages frequently reviewed by a search engine's Web crawler for inclusion in its index, ensuring that the most dynamic content on their Web sites is incorporated. The company said it plans to further enhance the paid inclusion products currently offered by FAST and AltaVista and intends to provide its advertisers with the benefits of consolidated reporting, billing, and a single interface for campaign management for both paid placement and paid inclusion products."
press release [corporate-ir.net]
OTOH, there's no reason MSFT can't buy Google. Although the culture thing is true, "the people" meaning the average joe, they just don't care about the Microsoft is Evil mantra and they even trust microsoft. I would say Google gets MORE users by being bought by MSFT, not take a hit at all. It would be a big win for MSFT and Google people could make a lot of money.
But I think Google would make more money by going public.
Both scenarios would probably kill the quality of Google because the IPO is as evil as MSFT and that day will open the door for a new google to take google's place.
Let's also not be naive, Google owners want money. They will do what it takes to maximize that effect. And I bet most everyone here would do the same.
I'm not sure M$N has anything to worry about. I see their results getting better, their crawls getting deeper and traffic from them growing everyday.
From alta vista I get people searching for way strange strings of unrelated words
"purple+halogen+psychiatrist+apple+ketch" and other weird queries.
From alltheweb... I don't always scroll down that far in the stats. I typically get more from Comet systems.
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ALSO - - Powdork
I agree with you, Altavista...
If my site targets primarily Network Hubs
I get hits (Search phrase query hits to my site) from Altavista like this...
1) Network hunnies talk to thier hubbies
2) Hubs + Hugs and Network Phones
3) Net works with new jobs
What's so weird is most hits that end up going to my site from an altavista total missed search query is where users use 4 word phrases. I think AltaVista is specializing in trying to get an algorhythym that is based on definite new 4 word combinations.
My opinion is they need a lot of work to get this correct.
All best from Cali
Ciao ciao
Yahoo buying inktomi was a big deal. Overture buying AV+Fast means nothing in traffic terms. I get more traffic from link partners than those 3 put together.
Overture said it could take 2 years to overhaul AV and the same is probably true for Fast. It could be years before these buyouts mean anything to us.
A lot of speculation here on Overture's intentions but these purchases don't change the game for me that much. Owning a search engine (or two) is one thing, marketing it for mass appeal and usage is another. Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN have the marketshare pretty well stitched up.
"If I'm Google, I sit and wait and see if Overture actually can do anything with these two big Web properties it has bought," Yankee Group analyst Rob Lancaster said. "The potential upside for Google is if it can't, Overture has just killed off two of its big competitors."
[biz.yahoo.com...]
"Overture is positioned to build and syndicate the best, most powerful search experience on the Internet, bar none, he said."
They are going after "adwords" and Google.
I like it.
Looks like both teams seem fairly confident their tech won't get thrown away.
The press release talks about "...industry-leading text analysis, duplicate search listing removal, anti-spamming techniques, as well as advanced clustering approaches" as AV's strenghts
Why throw away something like Prisma?
They could do a bit of both with both search engines, I imagine. They can keep both AltaVista and FAST active, can't they?
I have been reading this post for the better part of 30 mins. For the most part its just been a great deal of speculation and very few facts. Is there some way to get rid of the speculation, it does no good, and just stick to the facts?
A lot of speculation here on Overture's intentions but these purchases don't change the game for me that much. Owning a search engine (or two) is one thing, marketing it for mass appeal and usage is another. Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN have the marketshare pretty well stitched up.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that the world will be a different place when we wake up tomorrow. Heck, the world wasn't any different the day after Google launched, from what I recall.
But I think what changes the game is that Overture, like Yahoo with the Ink purchase, is loading up to take on Google front and center. The game may not begin tomorrow, next week, or next month, but this is important because it means more players are entering the tournament, so to speak.
Sure, the four sources you mentioned do have marketshare stitched up now. We also said the same thing 4 years ago about Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, etc. And then along came Google....
Sure miles. If żou have any facts we don't know about, let's have 'em! ;)
I believe WebmasterWorld was one of (if not the) first to air this story. As usual..
We can only speculate here and bring to the table the few good ideas and presumptions we have about this. Everybody involved in these major deals are public traded companies - if we knew anything, we'd be insiders and therefore couldn't discuss it. You see what I mean?
As soon as anything new comes out, I bet you're going to read about it here. Offcial news breaks gets checked and doubled check before they're posted :)
I dont have the facts and having read over most of them is seem like; Wow I am surprised, OMG, I wonder..., how dare the engines do this, good find, how is google gonna top it, new name for the new merger, whos next to get bought out, whats msn gonna do, short two or three word posts, and some other not very useful posts. Of course this does get the lurkers from the back corner out and posting, but its too much, for lack of a better word, junk.
The posts that show links to related articals, those are the useful ones for those of us who are used to seeing the search engines, directories, company change like the shifting shadow. I do see what you are saying, but I get tired of reading a thread thats 150 long and only getting 20 or so good posts. Those good posts are what are helpful moreso than the ones that are at best questionable. It would be nice to see some of the posts that are short and have already stated the obvious several times whittled down to a few. Thats it.
The only feature that isn't redundent is shopping. AV portal powered by Fast.
I keep thinking about the patents owned by AV.
Nice name. Did anyone think the product produced?
Or did it, and it was so buried under pay-for-results, that no one saw it?
I have noticed that a lot of the hits I have from AV often have Prisma adjustments/refinements. I never worked out a percentage.
Of course, that might also just be commentary on how well/bad I have optimized my sites for AV. ;)
I have used Prisma mainly on the AV news search.
Added: I think Prisma may be the most impressive thing AV has.
In addition, Overture has licensed FAST Data Search.
The Overture Browser and Overture Operating System has a nice sound to it.
I think the new name for this game could be "alloverfast"
('aloverfast' could be pronounced in such a way as to imply a degree of PPC desperation....)
:)
If Yahoo!'s forged an alliance of sorts with Overture [a current supplier], then Yahoo!'s acquisition of Inktomi and Overture's sucking in of Fast and AV would go a long way towards securing its market share.
In terms of search-driven traffic, Yahoo! seems to have, over the past few months, consolidated its second position behind Google. If Microsoft adopts the approach that it can always buy results and given 'who supplies whom', these takeovers look as though they might affect AOL most of all [to the benefit of Yahoo! and MSN]. Unless, of course, its subscription base is just so strong it can adopt Microsoft's approach.
Either way, of the major portals, Yahoo! would come out way ahead of the rest.
Unless Netscape / AOL have something going with Overture [also a partner]... that would stir things up a bit. Whichever way one looks at it, though, it appears to be a puzzle the answer of which lies somewhere outside the immediate ambit of 'a' buys 'b'.
But then that's just conjecture... something which is always fun when married to Search :).
admittedly it's relatively boring in terms of the implications for the rest of the industry...but they aren't doing it to keep us entertained
