The biggest Pay-Per-Click (PPC) engine in the world, they were previously known as GoTo.

They have been very successful reselling their results to other search sites, which usually list them as "sponsored listings" or "paid listings". They are currently supplying results to many of the worlds top search engines.

Overture recently embarked on a massive spending spree, purchasing AltaVista, and AllTheWeb, the web search unit of FAST. The AltaVista purchase cost $140 million in cash and shares, and the FAST purchase another $70 million, with a 3 year performance-related clause worth up to another $30 million

In a further twist to the tale, the new, expanded Overture have subsequently been purchased by Yahoo! in a massive $1.63 billion deal, leaving Yahoo as the only realistic competitor to Google in the free, crawled results arena.