agree - the synergies with a/v sound great BUT what's the price tag?
just some more a/v details here:
...
AltaVista Introduces New Services
Jun 28, 1999 (Tech Web - CMP via COMTEX) -- AltaVista announced its
revamped strategy on Monday, with initiatives aimed at local services,
shopping, and push content.
The company unveiled its Local Portal Service. This includes 40
localized sites, produced in conjunction with newspapers such as the
Houston Chronicle. It plans to add several more papers by the end the
of the year, including the San Francisco Examiner and the Seattle
Post-Examiner. The service is based on the Zip2 platform, created by a
company that creates co-branded local content sites with newspapers.
AltaVista bought Zip2 in February.
AltaVista also announced a new shopping service called Ultrastore. This
is intended to be a one-stop shopping service, allowing users to shop
in seven categories, such as computers and office and music and movies.
The service enables users to search through product inventories and see
exact shipping costs and information. It will also include an auction
service.
The Ultrastore is a product of the company's January purchase of
Shopping.com for $220 million. AltaVista CEO Rod Schrock said it
intends to push the service as a rival to Amazon.com.
AltaVista also unveiled an update to its desktop client. Introduced in
March as the AltaVista Tracker, this is a small program that
automatically downloads personalized information from the AltaVista
portal to a user desktop. It will be re-launched in July as the
AltaVista Microportal, with greater personalization features.
The company will promote the Microportal with $5 million in giveaways
to users. Schrock said the company hopes to have two million users for
the service by the end of the year and 10 million by early 2001. It
will compete with a similar push service launched by Excite last week.
Finally, Schrock announced a new "freshness guarantee" for its search
services. AltaVista will weed through its search results to pull out
old links. It will spider through links every 28 days, he said.
However, this will be stretched to every three months or so for some
categories of content which don't change very often, he added.
These initiatives will be followed by 25 new search services by the end
of the year, Schrock added. These will include services that add onto
the multimedia capabilities offered by the Photo & Media Finder. This
service, rolled out in March, allows users to search the Web for
pictures, as well as for audio and video clips.
The company also planes to ramp up its index, from 140 million pages
now to over a billion by the end of 1999. This will be accompanied by a
change to the look and feel of the site, as well as the company's first
major advertising campaign, he said.
Schrock also addressed questions about his company's possible
acquisition by CMGI.
"The talks are still going on, and they're going hot and heavy,"
Schrock said.
Reports of possible buyers for the portal began soon after Compaq's
January announcement that it would spin out AltaVista.
When and if CMGI bought his company, AltaVista would retain an
independent identity, Schrock said. It would also likely carry through
with its own IPO, he said.
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Copyright (C) 1999 CMP Media Inc. |
