Time Warner's AOL Buys Yahoo Answers Competitor

Last Wednesday it was Quigo and then early Monday morning it was Yedda, making for two Israeli acquisitions by Time Warner unit AOL in a week. Founded in 2006 by Avichay Nissenbaum and Yaniv Golan, Yedda will be absorbed as a wholly AOL owned subsidiary. Purchased at undisclosed terms, Yedda is similar to Yahoo Answers, employing semantic matching technology to automatically matches questions to other related questions while selecting the best available users to answer the question. Quigo, a contextual ad firm whose Ad Sonar is similar to Google's AdSense while its FeedPoint serves up ads on search results or Internet sites, was bought for a reported $340 million. Both of these will go into AOL's Platform A, launched in September, which now includes Advertising.com, AOL-run sites, Tacoda, Third Screen Media (bought just last spring) and AdTech. These recent acquisitions are directly related to AOL's renewed role as an advertising-focused media company. "This acquisition builds on AOL's community legacy," said an AOL spokesperson. "Asking a question is the most natural way to search for information and with the incorporation of Yedda's unique patent-pending technology, AOL will enhance our programming efforts while bringing together editorial and user-generated communities."

Sources: New York Times, CNET News, SearchEngineWatch.com, MarketWatch
Commentary: AOL's Quigo Acquisition: 'The Timing Was Right' • Acquisition Brings AOL Closer To Becoming Ad Network - Will It Help? • Is Google the Next AOL?
Stocks to watch: TWX. Competitors: YHOO, GOOG, MSFT

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