The search engine giant Yahoo Inc. (www.yahoo.com) announced on November 18 that it has agreed to provide paid search services to Microsoft Corp.'s MSN sites in the United States and overseas through June 2006, extending a contract by one year. The previous agreement between Yahoo's Overture Services Inc. and Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) ran through June 2005.
Under the terms of the deal, Overture will continue to provide its service to MSN sites in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. An Overture spokeswoman declined to comment on the value of the deal, though some analysts believe it could generate about $200 million in revenue a year for Overture (www.overture.com).
Yahoo and Google (www.google.com) have been locked in a battle for customers on both sides of the Atlantic in the lucrative business of selling ad-sponsored search engine listings. Time Warner's AOL Europe last month replaced Yahoo's Overture with Google to provide advertiser-sponsored search results for its Internet service. It is uncertain, though, when Microsoft will replace Yahoo's service, because the extension of the contract implies that any service from Microsoft will not be ready by June 2006.
