January 9, 2008
Microsoft to Acquire Fast Search for $1.23 Billion
MarketWatch and Search Engine Land have publicized the announcement made yesterday that Microsoft has made a $1.23 billion bid to purchase Norwegian company Fast Search.
Does this mean that a more relevant Live search is on the horizon? It's quite possible, according to some:
Now Microsoft has serious search engine capability rather than the mickey mouse effort it has had up until now.
In fact, Chris Sherman at Search Engine Land recommends that you keep your eyes peeled:
FAST was an early player in the web search market—it developed the AlltheWeb search engine and sold it to Overture in 2003. As part of the deal, Overture got the public AlltheWeb.com site (now a Yahoo property after Yahoo purchased Overture later in 2003), but FAST kept the web crawler technology and has continued to develop it. So Microsoft is getting a market-leading enterprise search company and a world-class web crawler (not to mention some of the smartest engineering talent in search) as part of this deal. Keep an eye on what Microsoft does with this prize over the coming months—it may surprise people.
Hopefully we'll see a lot of growth with the acquisition.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
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Tamar Weinberg in Microsoft MSN Search at January 9, 2008 10:17 AM
Comments (2)
Comments
Clickz reports that "While Microsoft would obtain Fast's search technology, the deal would potentially bring another benefit: Microsoft stands to extend its search advertising publisher network.As a vendor that provides search technology to numerous publishers including TV Guide Online, ThomasNet.com, YellowPages.com, Virgilio, "Washington Post," "Financial Times," and others, at least one analyst said the Fast acquisition bid could potentially help Microsoft extend its ad network."
Posted by Brendan O'Connell at January 9, 2008 18:39