Web Search–AllTheWeb
Another Week, Another Search Engine: AllTheWeb Acquired By Overture
One week after Overture acquired AltaVista, the comany has announced another acquisition, this time AllTheWeb from FAST Search and Transfer. Overture, a pay-for-performance search company, will acquire FAST’s Internet business unit for $70 million in cash, as well as performance-based cash incentive payments for up to $30 million over three years. From the announcement, “Under the terms of the agreement, Overture will acquire FAST’s Internet business unit assets including FAST Web Search�, AlltheWeb.com�, and FAST PartnerSite� products, related intellectual property rights, as well as data centers and equipment in Sacramento (USA) and London (UK). In addition, the FAST Internet business unit personnel will transfer to Overture.” What Overture will do with the AllTheWeb database is to be determined. In just 14 days, we’ve seen the two of the best web engines, in terms of “search power” acquired by Overture. You can see a few examples of the power in last week’s AV post. FAST will now focus and develop its Data Search product. It accounts for over 75% of FAST’s current revenue.
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More details to follow. Only time will tell what this means for all of us. Speculation will once again run rampant but much, if not all of it, will be on what this means for web advertisers.
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Good News: Gary Flake was named by Overture to bring together the technologies of Overture, AltaVista, and AllTheWeb. This is good news for searchers. Why? Dr. Flake previously worked at NEC Research. Some of the most useful specialized web search tools including Research Index and metasearch tools called Inquirus and Inquirus2 were developed (all three remain online but direct links to Inquirus are not allowed) there.
A few of Gary Flake’s publications:
“Using Web Structure for Classifying and Describing Web Pages”, 2002
“Improving Category Specific Web Search by Learning Query Modifications”, 2001
“Efficient Identification of Web Communities”, 2000
“DEADLINER: Building a New Niche Search Engine”, 2000
Self-Organization and Identification of Web Communities, 2002
Finally, it’s also important to mention that AltaVista has another highly respected web search/info retrieval researcher/scientist/developer on its team, Jan Pedersen.
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A quick review of the web search world from a researcher’s perspective: Google (its own database, its own technology), Teoma/Jeeves (its own database, its own technology), Inktomi (now part of Yahoo, operates MSN Search and an “Inktomi installation on Hotbot), AltaVista (now part of Overture, as of last week they told me the company would continue to operate as a separate entity). Search Wars 2003 are here. The more I think about it, all of this consolidation COULD good be a good thing for those of us who use the web as a research tool. Stay tuned and buckle up.

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