Microsoft bids $1.2 billion for FAST enterprise search

Microsoft will very likely acquire Norwegian enterprise search firm FAST for $1.2 billion. I dug a little deeper and found that $1.2 billion is about six times FAST's annual revenue. FAST hasn't, yet, reached the level where revenue translates into big profits, but the company estimated a net margin of about 10 % for 2008 in early December.

Apparently it is likely that Microsoft will integrate FAST's entreprise search into Sharpoint. Worth noticing is that FAST sold its consumer-oriented web search to Overture back in 2003, when the dollar was worth slightly more, for $100 million.