Yahoo! Search Marketing

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Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture Services, Inc.), was an Idealab spin off, originally known as Goto.com, that was the inventor of what is known in the search engine business as P4P, or Pay For Performance. This proved to be a fairly controversial notion, with a lot of concern raised about manipulation and the results being irrelevant.^{[citation needed]} In actuality, the auction model, combined with an extensive editorial team, produced highly relevant search results. ^{[citation needed]}Through partnerships, Overture enabled portals such as MSN and Yahoo! to monetize the hundreds of millions of web searches made each day on their sites. Indeed, these partnerships proved highly lucrative, and in a period otherwise marked by dot-com failures, Overture became a substantial profit driver for portals like Yahoo!.[1] (estimating that Overture contributed $25 million to Yahoo!'s revenue in Q3 2002). The business model and its crucial attendant patents^{[citation needed]} were later copied by several competitors, including, most famously, Google under the trademark AdWords.

In 2003, Overture was acquired by its biggest customer: Yahoo! for $1.7 billion.[2]. Before being integrated into Yahoo!, it had acquired, integrated, and run AltaVista and AlltheWeb, web search-engines which it acquired from CMGI and Fast Search & Transfer in 2003. The old brand names of Overture and others, such as the trademark Site Match are being phased out, as Yahoo! re-brands all of its products under the Yahoo! name.

goto.com is now owned and redirected to go2.com, an online and mobile search company.

1 Adware controversy
2 Bid for placement patent
3 Competitors
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Adware controversy

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Adware is a type of software, installed on a person's computer (usually as part of a larger software installation), which display ads to the user, based on the user's activity, on, or off the internet. Such software is often controversial because many users find it installed on their system, without consciously placing it there. Many critics call such software "spyware", on the grounds it secretly collects data about the user, and passes it on. Claria (formerly Gator), is a major producer of adware software, which is included in a large number of software applications. Claria displays ads provided from Yahoo! (Overture) and other companies. When users click on the ads, Yahoo! collects money from the advertiser, while paying money to Claria. Yahoo! has been criticized for supporting adware, by giving a financial incentive for its spread.

Further criticism, came when Yahoo! came out with the Yahoo! Toolbar, which allows users to remove spyware from their system. However, Yahoo! doesn't consider Claria spyware. So, it doesn't remove it, unless the user specifically asks for "adware" to also be removed. Yahoo! and Claria contend that the adware software is installed voluntarily, and that the ads provide a useful service. As well, revenue from the ads allow software to be provided at reduced cost, or even free to users.

A further criticism of Yahoo! comes from the fact, that many web sites, supported by advertisements, have found their ads replaced by Claria (sometimes Yahoo!) adware ads, which means Claria (and indirectly Yahoo!) profit from advertising on a web site, that never consented to show their ads. As well, some webmasters believe this infringes on their private property rights, and right to editorial control. Yahoo! asserts that it has nothing to do with this practice since it doesn't own or control Claria.

[edit] Bid for placement patent

Prior to its acquisition by Yahoo!, Overture asserted it had a patent related to its pay per click business model (U.S. Patent 6,269,361 ), which includes advertisers bidding for top placement on web sites. In its own words it asserts a patent "...related to the features and innovations surrounding our bid-for-placement products and our pay-for-performance search technologies,..."[3]. It has filed multiple suits over the issue. The largest suit, filed in 2002, was against Google, for its Adwords service, which provides a similar service (on its own web site, and on third party sites). Ultimately, Google and Overture (Yahoo!) settled the matter. Google agreed to issue 2.7 million shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license. [4] Overture (Yahoo!) had some limited success in settlements and licensing agreements over the patent, but has not yet won a decisive high court victory, that clearly defines and affirms their interpretation of their patent.