FindWhat.com — somewhat famous as a rival to Yahoo! in a patent dispute — and the various online businesses that are owned by it are going through serious changes; changes of name. Miva is going to serve as their umbrella brand-name from now on, though prior to this, FindWhat.com used to own Miva Merchant ecommerce storefront tool.

For better understanding, here is how brands will be renamed within the ex-FindWhat.com conglomerate:

• FindWhat.com & Espotting become Miva Media, and continue to develop activities in the paid listing networks area, covering mostly US and European markets. The acquisition of Espotting, in July 2004, was an impressive $184 million spent for the company.
• The Miva Merchant becomes Miva Small Business, offering hosted merchant storefronts, payment processing, logistics management and professional services. Miva Merchant was acquired for $6 million in the beginning of 2004.
• Comet Systems becomes Miva Direct and continues offering private branded toolbars and other search-related applications.

However, if you want to see the virtual locations of the to be Miva brands, we can only tell you that this is not possible yet. The most you can do is go to a page that offers more information on the future Miva umbrella, and try to get the overall picture. There, you'll also notice the headlines that are supposed to embody two different phases in the rebranding campaign: the teasing phase that says “a change is coming” and the revealing phase that proclaims “Miva means business”. But in this particular case, these two visions share the right and the left of the same Internet page, somehow breaking the suspense.

Sounds complicated so far?

Well, it is.

Miva, Espotting and Comet Systems were all acquired by FindWhat.com within 18 months before the ending of 2004. The rebranding decision was preceded by serious market research studies, before the management settled for a name that was already in the company, an ending that was not in its intentions, according to Craig Pisaris-Henderson, chairman and CEO of Miva.

The company's NASDAQ ticker symbol will change to “MIVA” on June 13.