Overture provides commercial searches to more than 88,000 advertisers, who bid on key words at a cost-per-click. These listings are then fed to partner engines, such as AltaVista, Lycos, MSN and Yahoo!
Terry Semel, chairman and chief executive of Yahoo!, said: "Together, the two companies will be able to provide the most compelling and diversified suite of integrated marketing solutions around the globe, including branding, paid placement, graphical ads, text links, multimedia and contextual advertising."
Overture will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo!, and its operations will remain in Pasadena following completion of the acquisition.
The deal is subject to anti-competition rulings, but once completed will consolidate Yahoo!'s position against its major rival, Google.
[Original release: Overture.com]
