...said it completed its $70 million cash purchase of the Web- search unit of Norway-based Fast Search & Transfer (FAST.OL), one of two key acquisitions in its battle for dominance in the fast-moving Web search and advertising market.
Tor
6:35 am on Apr 22, 2003 (gmt 0)
Overture has also released their own press release [corporate-ir.net] about this aquisition.
tigger
6:48 am on Apr 22, 2003 (gmt 0)
So I wonder who’s next on their shopping list
heini
8:38 am on Apr 22, 2003 (gmt 0)
And I just can't wait to see what they are going to make of it. OV has now two extremely powerful search tech crews in house. It's an enormous potential. But it's also very easy to make this going into the wrong directions.
Brad
12:23 pm on Apr 22, 2003 (gmt 0)
I guess now we will learn if they really have a plan or if they were just buying companies to keep them away from competitors.
hannamyluv
1:40 pm on Apr 22, 2003 (gmt 0)
So what exactly does OV plan to do with FAST now? AV should be wrapped up soon too. Will they use both SE for backfill or just canabalize one to boost the performance of the other?
bluelook
9:50 pm on Apr 22, 2003 (gmt 0)
The next move can be buying country specific search engines (at least for the markets that they are currently targeting): France, Germany, Korea, Japan, UK.
Nuno Oliveira
rolfewinkler
7:22 pm on Apr 25, 2003 (gmt 0)
Look for OVER to use Fast and AV assets to create algorithmic search and paid inclusion products they can sell along with pay-for-placement search. OVER doesn't want to market AV as a search destination to compete with Google and Yahoo/Inktomi; they'd get crushed. OVER wants to be a one-stop shop for web sites that want to monetize search.
In the meantime, legacy Altavista traffic will keep generating PFP revenue. And OVER will no longer have to split that revenue in the form of "traffic acquisition cost."
