• by Masha Geller , July 17, 2003

Overture Services, Inc. has extended its commercial search distribution relationship with HP in the U.S. for one year, and expanded the agreement to include Canada.

This marks the first deal that extends beyond the expected fourth-quarter closing of Yahoo's acquisition of the search provider announced earlier this week.

Under the terms of the agreement, Overture will provide its paid placement search results to users of the HP Pavilion and Compaq Presario lines of notebook and desktop PCs. Overture said it expects its commercial search results to be available to HP's Canadian users this summer. The Overture results will be available to users of HP computers performing Internet searches through HP's default home page and for those that click the "search" button of their Web browser.

Yahoo! on Monday announced plans to acquire Overture for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $1.63 billion, marking the first purchase of a major search services provider by a major portal. Overture will become a wholly-owned unit of Yahoo, and its operations will remain in Pasadena, California, following completion of the acquisition. According to documents filed with securities regulators on Thursday, Overture would owe Yahoo! $65 million if Yahoo's acquisition of Overture is broken up by another offer.