Overture's strategy: swimming with sharks

Sterling Hughes thinks more of Overture’s strategy than I do:

I disagree with Barry’s assement. Had Yahoo! not bought Inktomi, than I would most certainly hold the same opinion. However, I don’t think Microsoft (MSN) is happy that one of their major competitors now owns their search provider. Barry is right, traffic is important, not search: search is a commodity. That’s Overture’s advantage. Yahoo! threatens to steal traffic from the customers Inktomi powers; they are biting the hand that feeds them.

I’d be pessimistic about any company whose strategy is to be the partner of last resort for AOL and Microsoft–two companies not known for making their partners rich in the long run.
NOTE: For some reason, I get a ton of spam as comments on this particular message. I’ve decided to close comments on this message for a while to see if whoever has marked this a a good place to spam will go away. [Posted 7/12/04]