Search engine Overture has bought out the former internet giant AltaVista for $140m (£88m).

According to Associated Press, Overture will pay $60m in cash and $80m in stock for Palo Alto-based AltaVista, which introduced its search engine in 1995.

In August 1999, at the height of the dotcom boom, Altavista was valued at nearly $3bn.

But the former online great started to crash after it unsuccessfully tried to emulate the online services offered by rival Yahoo.

By January 2000, it had amassed $765m in losses and axed 500 jobs, reducing its payroll to the approximately 250 employees it has today.

An Overture spokesman said that AltaVista's technology would complement its main advertisement-driven search engine, which produces its results on how much businesses pay for their ranking.

The technique has enriched Overture, which earned $73m last year, as well as scores of other websites that license similar search engines.