What Good Does Overture Do Yahoo?
Yahoo! is shelling out $1.63 billion to buy Overture, the search listing placement broker that competes profitably with Google's search listing business. It also bought Inktomi recently. Now, supposedly all this makes some competitive sense for Yahoo! which is feeling threatened by Google. But, except for Google News, which is not a customized home page
Yet, one must wonder how Overture customers MSN, Lycos, AltaVista and InfoSpace are going to feel about subsidizing the business of their largest portal rival. It looks to me like Yahoo! may soon have an unprofitable search listing business. It's overseas business serves sites that, among other things, compete with Yahoo!. It seems like a great way to drive your customers into the arms of your competition, because Google is sticking with search and only search. All this really does, if you ask me, is set Google up for a successful IPO. And that's the last thing it needs, as it already prints money every quarter.
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at July 14, 2003 08:27 AM | TrackBack