What Microsoft wants from Yahoo
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Yahoo's Overture Services acquisition is the crucial link between Yahoo and Microsoft and is the key to understanding Terry Semel's Microsoft comments. Yahoo's Overture acquisition was not about search technology even though Overture owned the AltaVista and AllTheWeb search engines. By the time of the Overture acquisition, Yahoo already owned search technology via its acquisition of the Inktomi search engine in December 2002. Overture Services specialized in paid search. Overture Services' 2002 annual report reads:
Overture Services, Inc. is the global leader in Pay-For-Performance search (also known as paid search) on the Internet. Overture’s search service is comprised of advertiser’s listings, which are screened for relevance and accessed by consumers and businesses through Overture’s affiliates, a network of Web properties that have integrated Overture’s search service into their sites or that direct user traffic to Overture’s own site. In some cases, consumers and businesses access our search listings directly at our site. The search listings are ranked by the advertisers’ bid; the higher the bid, the higher the ranking. Advertisers pay Overture the bid price for clicks on the advertisers’ search listing (also known as a paid introduction, click-through or a paid click).
The above reads like a description of the Google AdSense and AdWords paid-search solutions and it is. Google is generally credited with pioneering the paid-search text ad, but it was Overture that originally came up with the idea. Overture not only pioneered the paid search business model but it also managed to patent the core ideas behind paid-search. In July 2001, the US patent office granted Overture US patent number 6,269,361. Also known as the '361 patent, it covered the basic paid-search bid-for-placement advertising model. The '361 patent effectively granted Overture the right to monopolize the lucrative US paid-search market and subsequently dictated the evolution of the global paid-search market.
After getting the '361 patent, Overture wasted no time going after its paid-search competitors and quickly mobilized its lawyers to corner the paid-search market. Initially, Microsoft, Yahoo, and most of the other paid search players chose to license the '361 patent. However, Google and Miva (a small paid search operator formerly known as FindWhat) chose to challenge the patent in court, and subsequently got sued by Overture for patent infringement.
Forbes.com - SETTING PATENT TRAPS
http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/065_print.html
Patent covenant agreement gave Novell access to Microsoft IP
Computer Business Review Online ^ | 11 May 2007 | Matthew Aslett
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1833866/posts
I still think its to kill off Zimbra. :P