Overture Buys Fast Search

generic-man writes "Hot off the heels of buying Altavista, Overture today announced it would buy Fast Search. Fast Search, a Norwegian company which manages AllTheWeb.com, will get $70 million in cash with up to $30 million in performance bonuses over the next three years. The deal is expected to close by April."

Comments

Actually, you're using Overture...

[Infonaut]

whether you like it or not. Unless you absolutely, positively never use anything but Google, you'll likely bump into Overture.

The trick is to remember that search engines for some time now have been intertwined in a bizarre series of relationships that mostly go on behind the scenes.

For example, Overture is utilized by Excite, Go, InfoSpace, Yahoo, Netscape, MSN, NBCi, and Ask Jeeves. AllTheWeb is utilized by Excite and Lycos.

Some search engines incorporate results from three or more other engines, and synthesize the results before spitting them out to the end user. Excite, for example, uses data from FindWhat, LookSmart, Inktomi, AllTheWeb, and Overture.

The above relationships are based on a six-month old chart I made to help myself keep the search engine world straight in my own head. Things change quickly, as we've seen of late, in the search engine world. But even though there is consolidation in the market, there are a few niche players that could continue to stay viable.