The Register reports that Yahoo is buying Overture for $1.63 billion.
Aside from the obvious Yahoo already uses Google for its search engine, this move is also interesting because Overture had previously purchased AltaVista and FAST while Yahoo had recently purchased Inktomi. That means that Yahoo’s now got three owned search engines, one contractual search engine, and two additional portals. Integrating (and even sorting them out) is going to be a pain in the butt. However, they’re now in a much firmer position vis-à-vis Google than they ever have been since FAST is a good search engine—I was never very impressed with Inktomi except in the beginning—and Overture makes Google’s ad revenue look like a pittance.
A Slashdot story about this matter has just appeared. I’m sure there’ll be some interesting discussion therein.