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Yahoo to acquire Inktomi
Yahoo announced that they will buy search technology provider
Inktomi for US$1.65 per share in cash (41% over the company's
closing price Friday), or about US$235 million.
Analysts said that Yahoo wants to be more independent from
Google, which recently entered traditional Yahoo markets such
as news and shopping search.
At the moment, Yahoo searches are run through Google by default.
Yahoo executives declined to say whether they will replace
Google's search technology with Inktomi's software once the
acquisition is completed.
The deal is expected to be completed in the first quarter
of 2003 but must be approved by shareholders and regulators.
Inktomi is currently supplying additional search results
to MSN Search, Overture, About.com, HotBot and Lycos. Jeff
Weiner, Yahoo's senior vice president of search and marketplace,
said Yahoo will continue to license Inktomi's software and
that Yahoo is planning to incorporate Inktomi's paid inclusion
service.
* AllTheWeb changed algorithms for key phrases
Last Wednesday, the Norwegian company FAST
(operator of AllTheWeb.com
) said that they had improved
its algorithms for multi-word queries. The changes should
result in more relevant links in many languages.
* Google launched Australian version
Rumors
has it that Google wants to open up a Sydney-based operation
in Australia. The official announcement may follow early in
the new year. The corresponding search site Google.com.au
has already been launched.
* Overture wins deals in UK and France
The pay per click search engine Overture renewed
its deal with Freeserve
, United Kingdom's biggest ISP with 2.5 million subscribers.
In addition, Overture closed a deal with Wanadoo
, Freeserve's parent company and France's biggest ISP with
nearly 8 million subscribers. Overture listings will now be
displayed on Wanadoo.fr and Voila.fr
(search engine).
* InfoSpace adds Teoma to its search sites
Teoma
results can now be found in InfoSpace's meta search site MetaCrawler.com
. Also, Teoma results should
soon appear in the InfoSpace properties Excite.com, DogPile.com
and WebCrawler.com.
* Yahoo! China integrated
3721 real-name search
Yahoo.com.cn
now uses 3721.com
's database of real-name keywords. Their list of keywords
translates to the domain names of 250,000 Chinese companies.
3721 claims to serve 20 million keyword resolutions per day
and to reach 95% of Chinese Internet users through its partnerships
with leading Chinese portals and ISP's.
* Google appears
in a cartoon in The New Yorker.
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