Overture To Buy AltaVista For $140 Million
from the there-goes-another-one... dept
As the new battle over search technologies heat up, it seems the old players - who have mostly been cast aside - are getting bought up. Just a few months after Yahoo's decision to buy Inktomi, Overture (one of the "new generation" of search technology companies) has announced plans to buy AltaVista for $140 million. Overture, of course, supplies the paid-placement search features for many websites, but have rapidly toned down their own search portal offerings, so you have to wonder what they'll do with AltaVista's search site. AltaVista, of course, has struggled to find a place in the search world, even if they were the first of the big players and have tried a number of different strategies (remember their Google look-a-like Raging Search?). The article about the deal quotes Overture's CEO saying they'd keep AltaVista and use it to test new products. I guess this means they'll stop making fun of Google for running their own search site and "competing" with their own customers.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
