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Technology Stocks : INFOSEEK (GO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Green who wrote (9341)	1/29/2001 8:01:16 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9343

Thanks Don....I was just going to post this....it's a little bit more info... Jan 29, 2001 - 06:28 PM Disney Stops Go.com, to Close Internet Group By Gary Gentile The Associated Press ap.tbo.com LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Walt Disney Co. became the latest media company to slash its online operations, saying Monday it will shutter the Go.com Web site and fold its Walt Disney Internet Group back into the company. The Group will operate under the same management as a Disney division overseeing such Web sites as Disney.com and ESPN.com. The consolidation will result in 400 layoffs. The move comes only weeks after News Corp., the media empire controlled by Rupert Murdoch, said it was shutting down its online division and eliminating more than 200 jobs. Other media organizations, including The New York Times Co., have also recently announced cutbacks in their online operations. Disney said Monday it will continue to operate a streamlined Go.com site while it moves various services and registered users to its other sites. The company said it is also looking at selling some of its assets, including the Infoseek search engine it bought in 1998. Disney president Robert Iger said the decision came after it became clear that Go.com would never become an industry leader and the separate stock would provide neither money for investment or acquisition nor serve as a tool to retain employees. "Given the fact we were not an industry leader, it was clear to us this business was a challenging business for us and would only get more challenging and the time to shut it down was now," Iger said. Go.com ranked fourth among Internet portals, behind Yahoo!, MSN and AOL, according to Media Metrix's figures for December. Iger said Disney was also hurt, along with many other companies, by the sharp decline in the value of Internet stocks that began last April. "In looking forward, it was pretty clear the best way to maximize growth was to manage it as one company with one set of shareholders, not two," Iger said. As a result, the tracking stock for DIG will be converted into 0.19353 of a share of Disney common stock as of March 20, 2001. On Monday, shares of the Internet Group were up 7.8 cents, or 1.3 percent, to close at $5.86 after dropping down as far as $3.68 on the New York Stock Exchange. Meanwhile shares of Walt Disney were trading at $30.82, up $1.01, on the New York Stock Exchange. The management of the Internet Group will continue to run Disney's separate Web properties, Iger said. He said he did not expect any further layoffs or cost-cutting measures immediately. The move was praised by Wall Street analysts. "Good riddance," said Jeffrey Logsdon of Gerard Klauer Mattison & Co. "At the time it was launched, there was a lot of enthusiasm about monetizing one's Internet assets. Clearly that was three investment lifetimes ago and doesn't particularly serve the interests of the Disney shareholders any longer." Disney announced its entrance into the Internet business in 1998, when it acquired Infoseek and said it would construct its own Web service to compete with Yahoo! Inc. and America Online Inc. In January 2000, Disney backed off its grand plans and said it would focus its Go.com site on entertainment and leisure as a way of separating itself from competitors. The Go.com site relaunched in September with a new design that more prominently featured Disney's individual Web sites, which were often leaders in their category. The new site kept the powerful Infoseek search engine, but served more as a place for visitors to find entertainment news and plan vacations. "This was not about lack of confidence in the content or dissatisfaction in the product," Iger said. "But we were never able to drive traffic to the point where this would ever become an industry leader." The Internet Group faced widening losses. On a pro forma basis, as if the complete acquisition of Infoseek and formation of the Walt Disney Internet Group had occurred at the beginning of 1999, the group lost $396 million in FY 2000, compared with a loss of $208 million in FY 1999. That's an increase in the operating loss of 90 percent. --- On the Net: Go.com: go.com Walt Disney Co.: disney.com AP-ES-01-29-01 1828EST