SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Terra Lycos has dropped Overture's listings across its U.S. Web pages after a disagreement over a contract the companies signed just three months ago.  "We understand a lawsuit has been filed by Lycos, but we haven't yet been served," said Jennifer Stephens, a spokeswoman at the Yahoo (YHOO: news, chart, profile) unit. "As a result, Lycos has removed Overture's listings from its site. We do not believe that Lycos has the right to take down our listings, and we're currently evaluating our options."

Google, the highflying Silicon Valley Web search company, recently began holding meetings with bankers in preparation for its highly anticipated initial public offering as it was still engaged in meetings of another kind: exploring a partnership or even a merger with Microsoft. According to company executives and others briefed on the discussions, Microsoft - desperate to capture a slice of the popular and ad-generating search business - approached Google within the last two months to discuss options, including the possibility of a takeover.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 30, 2003--Jupiter Research, a division of Jupitermedia Corporation (Nasdaq: JUPM), today announced the results of its latest Jupiter Research Constellation ranking - Overture outpaced Google with the best solution for paid listings, based on a strong feature set and the best management interface.

FindWhat.com reported net income in Q3 2003 of $2.8 million, or $0.12 per diluted share, which reflected an effective tax rate of 38%. In Q3 2002, net income was $1.8 million, or $0.09 per diluted share, which reflected an effective tax rate of 39%. For the nine months ended September 30, 2003, FindWhat.com reported net income of $8.2 million, which reflected an effective tax rate of 38%. For the nine months ended September 30, 2002, FindWhat.com's net income was $8.1 million, which included no net income tax expense and included a deferred tax benefit of $0.7 million.

PASADENA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 17, 2003--Overture Services, Inc., a global leader in commercial search services on the Internet and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO - News), today announced it has extended its search distribution relationship with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - News) in the United States and United Kingdom through June 2005.

A French court has ruled against Google France in an intellectual property dispute, saying the company must pay a fine for allowing advertisers to tie their text notices to trademarked search terms. The Lower Court of Nanterre required Google France to pay 70,000 euros (about $81,400) to two companies that owned the rights to certain words. Google France sold the use of these words to advertisers through its AdWords program. AdWords permits individuals and companies to place advertisements on the Google home page that appear when a specific search term is used.

Last year, the FTC notified Web operators--including Yahoo-owned AltaVista and America Online--that they must clearly mark advertisements that appear within their search results. Though some reform trickled through the industry, questions still linger about how well companies label the commercial listings that appear when Web surfers delve into their indices.

Google is augmenting its popular AdWords program with several new features, including a tool that lets advertisers gauge how frequently clicks on paid links result in transactions. Unlike many traditional paid advertising programs, Google monitors the keyword ads for traffic and de-emphasizes advertisements that fail to garner hits, in an effort to keep results relevant to site users' interests.

LookSmart, (Nasdaq: LOOK; ASX: LOK), the global leader in paid inclusion search marketing today announced the launch of Sponsored Listings, the Company's first bid-for-placement search listings product, which enables advertisers to precisely target their campaigns by bidding for the terms that are core to their business. The Company also announced that it is distributing Sponsored Listings across a network of partners that includes CNET, Road Runner, InfoSpace, LookSmart.com, Cox Internet, Mamma.com and Alltel.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- LookSmart (Nasdaq: LOOK - News; ASX: LOK - News), a global leader in search, today announced that Microsoft will not renew its distribution and licensing agreement with LookSmart. LookSmart and Microsoft have agreed to extend the terms of the current agreement through January 15, 2004, after which the agreement will terminate

Overture's paid placement search listings are generated by advertisers who bid for placement on search terms relevant to their businesses. A multi-lingual editorial team based in Dublin, Ireland reviews these listings before they are distributed to the company's Austrian and Swiss distribution partners. An advertiser only pays the bidded amount to Overture when a consumer clicks on one of its search listings.

Google and Amazon.com are fighting for top computer scientists on Google's home turf: search results. When Web surfers use Google to search on the name "Udi Manber," who is president of Amazon's newly formed search unit, A9.com, they'll find the first result is an ad for jobs at Google. Amazon countered late Thursday by sponsoring its own recruiting ad on Manber's name through Google's self-serve ad program, AdWords. Still, Google's ad appears above Amazon's.

FindWhat.com announced plans Thursday to license its Internet marketing technology to a massive Japanese company for use in that country. The licensing agreement with Tokyo’s Mitsui & Co., Ltd. is the first of its kind for the Fort Myers-based FindWhat, which specializes in pay-per-click advertising. The Japanese search listing database will be kept within FindWhat’s existing systems in Fort Myers and Atlanta, but the Japanese customer accounts will be serviced by Mitsui, said Phillip Thune, chief operating officer and chief financial officer for FindWhat

Google has amassed 150,000 advertisers worldwide, thanks to an aggressive international growth strategy in Web search that now includes Spain, the company said Thursday. The Mountain View, Calif.-based search company said that along with its new country-specific site in Spain, Google.es, it also opened an advertising-sales office in Madrid to cater to marketers in that region. The company now operates in 21 countries.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said Monday that Google Labs, the search company's research-and-development arm, unveiled a program that lets people type in a search term, along with an address or ZIP code, to find Web results and a miniature map from within the area. "The technology behind Google Search by Location is one of the first of its kind and is an exciting new direction for Google users seeking local information," a Google representative said via e-mail.

As reported by Pandia this summer the American pay per click text ad search engine FindWhat announced that it would buy European Espotting, thus laying the foundation for what could become a new major player in this market. Alas, there seem to be a strain in the relationship. FindWhat now wants to renegotiate the deal. After having reviewed Espotting financials FindWhat has changed its views regarding Espotting's strengths and prospects, and could even decide not to finalize the merger.

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- It's said that local advertising accounts for two-thirds of total advertising dollars. And, Yahoo appears poised to take in a good portion of those advertising dollars as they go online. Overture, which is being acquired by Yahoo, has been testing a new local search product since last week.

company Miva Corp. for $5.5 million in cash and stock and the assumption of about $2.5 million in debt. In the firFORT MYERS, Fla. (Dow Jones)--FindWhat.com plans to acquire privately held e-commerce software st six months of 2003, Miva has lost about $400,000 on revenue of $ 1.0 million. In all of 2002, the company lost about $800,000 on $2.6 million in revenue.

Pay-per-click search firm Overture announced today that it has secured a court injunction to get its search results reinstated on T-Online's portal after the ISP dropped them last month. The company applied for the court injunction following T-Online's announcement that it was replacing Overture's web search and paid listings with Google, despite the fact that its contract with Overture was not due to expire until next year.

Web site owners can now share revenue with online advertising service provider ah-ha.com, Inc. (www.ah-ha.com), thanks to a new partnership between ah-ha and search engine developer Rolist(TM) (www.rolist.com). Under the agreement, approved sites can syndicate content from ah-ha.com via BannerBoxes (www.bannerboxes.com), a new pay-per-click advertising solution that allows Web site owners to display ah-ha paid listings.

Online advertisers have realized that placing ads beside search results reap better results than the banner ads that many Internet users find annoying. Advertising sales from Internet searches are estimated to be more than $2 billion this year, and are predicted to grow 35 percent annually -- hitting nearly $7 billion by 2007, according to U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray.

Spurred by buying from small businesses, sellers of sponsored keyword results the paid links that pop up in response to specific search queries have seen their business surge over the last two years. But as more merchants look to snap up the same keywords, search-engine experts say they also appear to be pushing up prices.

While not mentioning Yahoo (SYMB:YHOO) specifically, Brin highlighted Inkotmi, Alta Vista, Fast and Overture Services as the companies that he thinks would face difficult times as they attempt to combine. Yahoo bought Inktomi and is in the processing of buying Overture (SYMB:OVER), which purchased Alta Vista and Fast earlier this year. "Companies have trigger fingers," Brin said. "Companies have to think about integration challenges."

Search advertising network Overture is to further expand its presence in the Asia Pacific market, announcing plans to launch its paid placement service in Australia by the end of the year. The company, which last month agreed to be acquired by Yahoo! for $1.6bn, said it has opened an office in Sydney and appointed former VP of AltaVista Asia Pacific, Mel Bohse, to head up the new Australian business.

"Small sites have a lot of content pages and didn't have a way to reach advertisers," Susan Wojcicki, director of product management at Google, said in an interview. "Six weeks ago, we told publishers they can sign up online for AdSense, a program for publishers or Web sites to serve targeted ads on content pages…It's aggressive and generous to the publishers."

Emeryville-based Internet search firm Ask Jeeves Inc. (Nasdaq: ASKJ) said more users and gains from a business unit helped boost its financial figures to a profitable level.The company posted income of $4.9 million, or 9 cents per share, on sales of $25.6 million, compared with a loss of $4.9 million, or 12 cents per share, on sales of $15.4 million a year ago.

Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - News), a leading global Internet company and Overture Services, Inc. (Nasdaq:OVER - News), a global leader in commercial search services on the Internet, today announced they have signed a definitive agreement under which Yahoo! will acquire Overture. Under the terms of the agreement, each outstanding common share of Overture will receive 0.6108 shares of Yahoo! common stock and $4.75 in cash, reflecting an aggregate purchase price of approximately $1.63 billion, or $1.52 billion net of Overture's March 31, 2003 cash balance, less the amounts earmarked for their two recently closed transactions