Microsoft Joins Battle for More Web Surfers / After Attracting Online Traffic to a 'start Site,' a Company Will Try to Keep Them with More Features
The News Tribune Tacoma, WA
Fri, Apr 17 1998
A new battleground has emerged in the fast-moving world of the Internet. The contestants are fighting to attract the most traffic by crea ting the most popular "start site."
Ideally, such an all-encompassing site is one at which Web surfers will start their visit to the Internet and one at which they will stay for a prolonged period.
Now Microsoft is about the enter the battle with its own version of a start site that is code-named "Microsoft Start."
Emerging as the early victors in this war are search engines such as Yahoo, Excite and Infoseek. The reason for their emergence is that many Web surfers start their time online by searching for a subject, topic or person, and use one of these popular search engines to do so.
In turn, the search engine companies are capitalizing on this traffic by providing additional services on their Web sites, such as stock quotes and news, so that Internet users will stick with them longer. They hope, too, that many users will stay with them right until they log off.
Such expanded search engines are providing strong competition to the likes of America Online, an online service provider.
The battle is being reflected in the stock market, where search engines Yahoo and Excite have almost doubled in value in the last month. A relatively new player, Seattle's go2net, has seen its stock price grow five times in value in the last four months.
Yahoo is the most popular Internet search engine and has one of the most visited Web sites. It is experiencing almost as many visits as AOL. It now has started turning a handsome profit through providing pay services and advertising on its site.
Into the fray comes Microsoft. Already its www.microsoft.com site is among the 10 most-visited sites, but now the Redmond software maker, never happy with being in second place, wants to get a bigger share of the Internet action.
It is developing "Microsoft Start" as a place to which it hopes to attract millions of users the minute they log on to the Internet - and to keep them there.
The site was outlined Thursday by Pete Higgins, group vice president at Microsoft, to 420 people who attended a Bellevue conference on Internet banking and brokerage services.
The first page of Microsoft Start will include links to the Inktomi search engine; news; free e-mail (Microsoft's hotmail); tools, such as obtaining the latest stock quotes; its Expedia travel services; and a directory leading to business, education, reference, entertainment and other sites.
"This is an important investment for us," Higgins said. "And it is one in which we will have to compete aggressively."
He did not indicate when the site would go online.
Higgins said online services are in transition, moving from proprietary online services, such as America Online, Compuserve and the "old" Microsoft Network to Web equivalents, such as the start sites, content and services sites, and Internet service providers.
"Start sites are really dictating what people are doing online," Higgins said. "They are dictating the pace of the Internet. They are getting advertising dollars or are earning money through electronic commerce.
"This is the place to be."
To be effective, these sites need to be easy to use, he added.
"They need to be as productive as flipping open the newspaper."
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