Maybe this is old news, so if so just point me to a place with info on this, but I noticed altavista.com and yahoo.com have the exact same search results and even seem to have the same advert system. I am assuming yahoo owns altavista? Where was I sleeping when this happened?
Overture bought Alta Vista about 3 years ago: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-984968.html 6 months later, Yahoo bought Overture: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/07/14/yahoo_buys_overture/
this will also give you an idea why Google & AOL also have identical results.. http://www.search-this.com/search_engine_decoder.asp
altavist and alltheweb use yahoo result and when you click on add URL, it will take you to login to yahoo email...id..
Whats going to happen to the search engines when they all buy out each other. Google is already almost a monopoly of search engines. What if something happens and they find a huge flaw to the back bones of their systems...