• by April 22, 2003

It's official. Overture Services, Inc. on Monday completed the acquisition of the Web search unit of Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), a developer of enterprise search and real-time filtering technologies.

Company officials say that this acquisition, combined with Overture's previously announced plan to purchase AltaVista, which is expected to close before the end of this month, will "strengthen Overture's leadership in commercial search and position the company to build the most powerful and comprehensive search capability on the Internet."

In accordance with the terms of the acquisition agreement as announced on February 25, 2003, Overture acquired FAST's Web search unit for $70 million in cash. The transaction provides for a performance-based cash incentive payment of up to an additional $30 million over three years.

Through the combination of FAST's Web search unit and AltaVista, Overture hopes to be at the forefront of the industry in offering a full suite of paid placement, paid inclusion and algorithmic Web search products and services for syndication to portals, ISPs and other search destination sites.