Yahoo Plans to Phase Out Overture Brand Name

Yahoo Inc. said Monday that it would mostly stop using the name of a Pasadena-based sponsored-search company it bought 17 months ago.

The Overture Services division, created after Yahoo acquired Overture Services Inc. for $1.8 billion in October 2003, will be renamed Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions in the United States this spring and later in most overseas markets, the company said.

Overture launched as GoTo.com in 1998 and pioneered the practice of delivering paid advertising alongside search engine results.

So-called sponsored search has become a multibillion-dollar business, fueling the Internet sector’s resurgence after the dot-com crash of 2000.

Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., will make the name change to unify “under one banner and one common approach,” said Senior Vice President Ted Meisel. The company last month changed the name of its streaming music service Launch, based in Santa Monica, to Yahoo Music.