Microsoft Agrees to Buy Fast Search for $1.23 Billion

Wow ...

[BroadProspect]

from: [bloomberg.com...]

Microsoft Corp. agreed to buy Norway's Fast Search & Transfer ASA for 6.6 billion kroner ($1.23 billion) as it adds software products that help companies mine, store and manage data.

Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, will pay 19 kroner for each Fast Search share, the companies said today. The offer is 42 percent more than the closing price on Jan. 4.

/BP

[BroadProspect]

for everyone that complained about the quality of SERPs in msn, i suggest you check out [alltheweb.com...] (this is the SE that runs the FAST technology) and see that the quality there is x100 times worst!
:-<

/BP

[Reno]

Yahoo had purchased AllTheWeb some years back, about the same time they picked up AltaVista. Now we read that MS is buying their "Fast Search" project for a ton of money. Say what you will about the effectiveness of their search engines, these folks are seriously good in the world of business dealings.

.........................

[Marcia]

FAST technology was darn good in its day, they were growing and had some outstanding features. There was a FAST forum here, and in some localities they had a fairly decent market share and were growing.

But it's now Yahoo's search instead, so I guess Microsoft is buying what went along with FAST before the acquisition.

[Philosopher]

Actually FAST doesn't power alltheweb.com anymore and haven't for a few years. The alltheweb.com property was purchased by Yahoo who now powers it (you'll notice the Yahoo copyright at the bottom).

Ooops. Marcia beat me too it.

[edited by: Philosopher at 5:48 pm (utc) on Jan. 8, 2008]

[Marcia]

Here's their forum, deprecated and combined with Alta Vista's after the acquisition:

FAST/AlltheWeb/AltaVista [webmasterworld.com]

And at one point in time early on, the FAST Dance Card [webmasterworld.com]

[martinibuster]

As I recall, there were two divisions, the Enterprise Search division, and the Web Search division. Yahoo purchased the web search part of the company only.

What Microsoft purchased is the enterprise search company, the piece Yahoo left behind. Google is in the Enterprise Search field already. It's a natural fit for Microsoft.

[jatar_k]

[webmasterworld.com...]