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Yahoo Buys Overture for $1.63 Billion
securitas writes "Today Yahoo announced it plans to buy search technology company Overture for $1.63 Billion. The move is seen as a way to compete with rivals like Google and MSN, especally in the paid search and advertising category. This takeover occurs following this article about Google and Overture's race to secure partners for its paid search advertising. Other reoprts at CNN Money, ZDNet/CNet, AP via the Washington Post, Reuters, Bloomberg and Dow Jones via Yahoo. Press release at Overture and Yahoo."
Overture press release and the Yahoo Media Relations press release center.
Looks like it was mostly stock. See, once you're on the stock market, you have the ability to print money simply by 'creating' new stock.
The problem comes when trying to sell it, as it is only worth what the next guy will buy it for.
In reality, the deal was closer to 270 million in tangible (have it in your hands) money.
Rod Taylor
Altavista, as Altavista was owned by Overture.
http://www.altavista.com/about
Have a look at the article on El Reg
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Big conspiracy, or just a hiccup in what Google calls a beta service?
Let's just click on that link again:
Searched news for Overture Yahoo. (BETA)
Results 1 - 10 of about 344. Search took 1.59 seconds.
Occam's razor, and all that
--
Overture used to be paid search portal GoTo.com which recently bought AltaVista for $140 million and then bought Fast Search / Alltheweb.com for $100 million. It was one of the IdeaLab properties. Interesting AP article about Overture's history and challenges over the last six years mirrored here.
What the hell is "Google" or "Yahoo!" (Yes I know google means something but it sounds like it fell out of a gooses ass.)
The "Google" spelling is also used in "The Hitchhikers Guide
to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, in which one of Deep
Thought's designers asks, "And are you not," said Fook,
leaning anxiously foward, "a greater analyst than the
Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and
Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single
dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand
blizzard?"
Source
-Tolerate my intolerance
They don't have much tech, but they have a good sales team.
Overture's product is to add "sponsored results" to search results. Their original GoTo.com product was nothing more than Inktomi's results with their sponsored results on top. Now, renamed as Overture their business is to sell the ads that get put at the top results at Yahoo and other search engines... pretty much all of the majors other that Google who does it themselves.
Basically, Yahoo's buying their supplier of sponsored results instead of building their own sponsored results system...
Overture is capable of delivering as many clicks as I am able to pay for.
;)
I can spend $3000 at google and get ~1000 visits or I can spend $3000 at overture and get ~3200 visits
I'm sure that may not be the case for every business, but it is true in my space.
I should have added that Your Mileage May Vary to my original post
Yahoo is the name of some tribe / country / race in Jonathan Swift's novel "Gulliver's travels".
The shareholders of Overture get $4.75 cash & .6108 shares of Yahoo for every share of overture they own.
But, the only difference between "tangible" money and Yahoo stock is a click of the sell button. If Yahoo stock tanks in the next few months, the Overture shareholders didn't get screwed, they had the opportunity to sell.
If you are shareholder of Overture you recieved a fair deal for you stock. You just have to go through the extra step of selling your new Yahoo stock. (You actually get a slight premium from the buyout)
Yahoo's search results are (currently) provided by Google, and have been since 2000.
They've been outsourcing and not using their own technology since at least 1996.
More info can be found here
You should get out more. There are tons of search engines which are quite clear about what are paid ads and what are not. There are tons of search engines which do text only ads. Indeed Overture owns one of them, and it's results are about as relevant as Google's.
sigs are a waste of space