Overture Services, Inc. will acquire search engine AltaVista Co. for $140 million in cash and stock. Overture provides pay-for-performance search functions for Web sites.
The purchase will allow Overture to enhance its Web query functions to portals and Internet service providers as well as providing access to AltaVista’s advertiser base.
Overture will tender $80 million of its common stock, plus $60 million in cash, for the Palo Alto, CA-based search engine, which is a majority-owned operating company of CMGI, Inc. The deal is expected to close by April.
In a teleconference, Overture executives indicated that AltaVista’s management team will remain in place. They also stressed the desirability of advanced algorithmic search technology, which is used in weighting which sites will be returned to the Web browser.
Overture will use also AltaVista’s Web site to test and refine a variety of new products and services in a live setting. AltaVista’s search-related technology patents will help support Overture’s entry into algorithmic search, according to a company statement.
Pasadena CA-based Overture’s advertisers bid for placements within search engine results and pay when a searcher clicks through a sponsored link. In fourth quarter 2002, Overture made 563 million paid introductions.
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