Overture, Google Race for Japanese Supremacy

Overture Services' (OVER Quote) star is rising in Japan, though the company can't quite shake its major competitor.

Overture, which operates a search engine supported by pay-per-click advertising, said Monday that it had reached a deal putting its service on Yahoo! Japan, the largest Internet portal in Japan. The nonexclusive agreement, says Overture, solidifies the company's position for its planned December launch of its Japanese product, the first the company is offering in Asia.

Meanwhile, Overture rival Google said Monday that Yahoo! Japan, owned in part by Yahoo! (YHOO Quote), would soon start running the paid search advertising service that Google launched this summer.

The announcements indicate how the paid search model -- one in which advertisers bid on keywords so their listings or ads will pop up when an Internet user searches for a particular term -- is being exported from the U.S. throughout the globe, similar to the case with Internet business models devised earlier. ...