Microsoft has announced that it will make an offer to acquire Fast Search & Transfer, a Norwegian company that provides enterprise search solutions, by buying its shares at 19.00 Norwegian kroner (NOK) per share, which values Fast at $1.2 billion.
Fast Search & Transfer's board of directors has unanimously recommended to the shareholders to accept this offer, and shareholders representing approximately 35 percent of outstanding shares have already accepted, which makes this pretty much a done deal. The acquisition will formally be completed somewhere in the second quarter of 2008.
Although Fast Search & Transfer's core business is enterprise search, in 2007 they turned towards online advertising and search monetization. After Microsoft's huge acquisition of aQuantive, this latest acquisition is another indicator of how fierce is the battle for the ultimate search and advertising platform between the three internet giants: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.