Talk about a billion-dollar overture. Yahoo plans to buy search company Overture Services - which specializes in selling ad links accompanying search results - for about $1.63 billion, a deal seen by observers as taking dead aim at search engine competitors like Google and Microsoft.
The deal is said to involve an exchange of each Overture share for $4.75 cash and a 0.6108 share of Yahoo, which CNET.com said would put Overture's value at $24.63 a share, or 15 percent over the company's July 11 closing price.
Announcing the planned deal July 14, Yahoo said in a conference call with reporters that the Overture deal would let it expand pay-for-performance search business and expand its contextual advertising throughout its network, CNET reported. For its own part, Overture recently had been fighting back against Google, including acquisitions aimed at helping to broaden its search service offerings, CNET added.
Yahoo chief executive officer Terry Semel told the conference call gathering that combining Yahoo and Overture would make the new union the largest player in Internet advertising, giving Yahoo more room to reach small and medium market advertisers.
