January 30 2001

Disney to close the Go portal

On Monday January 29 The Walt Disney company announced that it will close the Go.com portal and search site by the end of February, laying off 400 employees in the process. The Disney Internet Group will keep other sites, like ESPN.com and ABCNews.com.

According to MSNBC Disney's Chairman and CEO has told employees that "It has become clear that the optimal way to manage our strong branded Internet sites (...) is to align them more closely with our offline businesses. (...) Market realities have let us to conclude that the Go.com portal is an ancillary business and the best thing for our company is for us to focus on our branded sites."

To Search Engine Watch Susan Murdy, Go's vice president of communications, says that the plan is to shut down the site 30 days: "For the next couple of days, we're going to keep the site as is, in sort of autopilot mode. After a few days, we're going to streamline the look and the functionality of Go, keeping popular features such as email and stock portfolios,".

Search capabilities will also be retained during the transition period.

The Walt Disney Co.also announced that it will convert all outstanding shares of Disney Internet Group common stock into shares of Disney common stock effective March 20, 2001.

Disney spun off the Internet Group in the autumn of 1999, giving it the name Go.com. The idea was to make a portal that could compete with big shots like Yahoo! and AltaVista, by combining Disneyís Internet entities with the former Infoseek search engine. As some of our readers will know, Infoseek used to be one of the major high quality search engines before the brand was assimilated into Go.

The fact is that the road has been uphill all the way for Go. Recently the site was given a complete face-lift. The new goal was to become the No. 1 entertainment gateway, instead of being an all round portal. Disney has obviously not been satisfied with the results, although in our opinion it may be a bit early to tell whether the new strategy would have succeeded in the long run.

The main problem, however, is the lack of revenue. Portals cannot any longer rely on the sale of banner ads only, and the markets have lost their belief in dot com companies that never show profit.

According to The New York Times, Eisner feels that the advertising community has lost faith in the Internet and specifically in portals: "We were waiting for something at the end of the rainbow that was looking less and less worth waiting for." In other words: Even if Go.com did succeed in bringing in more visitors, Disney would not consider it sufficiently profitable.

Disney will now try to sell off the Infoseek search engine and the volunteer based Go Guide directory. Whether they will be able to find a buyer is uncertain.

The Infoseek search engine has not been given much attention during the Disney years, and the Go Guide Directory faces stiff competition from Yahoo!, Looksmart and the Open Directory, which all are of a better quality.

• Disney to Discontinue Go.com Portal (Internet.com)
• Going, Going, Go.com-Gone (Search Engine Watch)
• Disneyís Go.com to be shut down (MSNBC)
• The Walt Disney Co. to Convert Common Stock of Disney Internet Group to Disney Common Stock, Discontinue GO.com Portal (press release)
• Disney to Abandon Portal Site (New York Times)
• Second-Tier Portals: Going the Way of Go.com? (BusinessWeek)
• Infoseek Memorial Services (SEW :)
• Go.com

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