Where does Overture Fit In?

Pardon my ignorance on this one...

[BillyS]

I see folks at Yahoo beating their chests now that they've got some kind of pilot going on with Google, but how does Overture fit into this picture? They paid $1.6 billion for the company less than 5 years ago. What happened to that investment?

[Receptional Andy]

Originally, Overture's system was just rebranded as Yahoo Search Marketing and continued running as before. This system was then adapted and released as Yahoo Panama [google.com], their current PPC platform.

If your question was more about why Yahoo would devalue that by outsourcing to another PPC provider, I would suggest it's a business decision - Google seemingly makes much more per visitor than the other PPC engines, and so could be much more profitable for them. Whether or not this is a good idea long term is a matter of opinion.

[BillyS]

That answers my question - they're ready to throw out a nearly $2 billion investment.