More Consolidation In The Search Market
Fast Search & Transfer acquires Overture Services' AltaVista enterprise search business.
The search-market consolidation that's been in high gear the past several months may have crescendoed Tuesday with Fast Search & Transfer's acquisition of the AltaVista enterprise search business from Overture Services Inc. for an undisclosed price. The deal, which is the second between the two companies in less than four months, marks at least the sixth notable exchange of search technology since November, but the dust may settle after this one closes.
"This completes the unbundling of enterprise and Web search, with one notable exception, and only one: Google," says Matthew Berk, senior analyst at Jupiter Research. But Berk expects Google, which sells a line of search server appliances unlike anything other vendors offer, to continue succeeding in serving both the enterprise and Web-search markets, a fence-straddling challenge no other vendors have been able to weather. Consider that in the past seven months: