Overture Closes Fast Acquisition

May 8, 2003

Overture, a global leader in commercial search services on the Internet, announced on April 22nd, 2003 that it had completed the acquisition of the Web search unit of Fast Search & Transfer, a leading developer of enterprise search and real-time filtering technologies.

Overture said it completed its $70 million cash purchase of the Web-search unit of Norway-based Fast Search & Transfer (FAST.OL). This is one of two key acquisitions in its battle for dominance in the fast-moving Web search and advertising market.

Under the terms of its deal with Fast, Overture acquired the company's AlltheWeb.com search engine and its "paid-inclusion" services for $70 million in cash. Overture also said the transaction includes an additional performance-based cash incentive payment of up to $30 million over three years.

Through the combination of FAST's Web search unit and AltaVista, Overture expects to offer customers a full suite of paid placement, paid inclusion and algorithmic Web search products and services for syndication to portals, ISPs and other search destination sites. Additionally, Overture also hopes that its own 80,000 advertisers will benefit through increased access to new products and sources of distribution to drive targeted leads.

As part of the agreement, Overture will use the new acquisition to test new approaches in the search process. The acquisition also will add to Overture's international presence, through FAST's key distribution relationships and advanced linguistic capabilities in about 50 languages.

Founded in 1997, FAST is based in Oslo, Norway and has operations in the United States (Boston, San Francisco), Europe (Norway, France, Germany, Italy, UK), and Japan. The acquisition includes FAST Web Search algorithmic search, AlltheWeb.com, and FAST PartnerSite paid inclusion services. FAST retains the intellectual property relating to its enterprise search technologies.

Source: Search Engine Optimization Ethics

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