Netscape buys joint-venture: Netscape bought out half of its little-known Actra e-commerce joint venture with GE Information services with 1.7 million shares of its own stock, the companies announced today.
Netscape brass trumpeted the company's ongoing effort to establish a major beachhead in the extranet market, with CEO Jim Barksdale heralding the acquisition as "a dramatic step in the evolution of Netscape from a browser company into an enterprise software company."
Actra was founded in April 1996 to develop e-commerce software applications. GE said the venture had accomplished everything it was supposed to. It has introduced five new products in its CommerceXpert line, and GE said it had provided a "very attractive return on its investment," though the company would not give a dollar figure.
With the acquisition of Actra, Netscape vice president of corporate communications Rosanne Siino suggested that Netscape is now in position to dominate a market in which Microsoft doesn't compete. While Microsoft and several other companies make products that fulfill some of the business-to-business extranet realm, Siino said no single company can compete with Actra's complete enterprise package.
Sounds like a challenge hard for Redmond to resist.
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AOL turns a profit: America Online revenues jumped 49 percent for its fiscal first quarter ended in September, to US$522 million, compared to $350 million in the same quarter last year, the company reported today. The rise was thanks to the addition of 821,000 subscribers during the typically slow summer season, giving AOL a total membership of 9.4 million, not including the CompuServe members it recently acquired. AOL said the rise in membership puts it "ahead of schedule" to reach its long-projected 10-million-member goal.
First-quarter earnings resulted in a profit of $19.2 million compared to a loss of $354 million in Q1 '96, when AOL took a huge accounting charge to cover the costs of acquiring new members. In its fourth quarter, AOL also took big member acquisition charges and reported a loss of nearly $12 million. (6.Nov.97)
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Gap's stylin' with Shockwave: Online shopping got a mainstream boost today as the bastion of everyday casualwear launched Gap Online, marking the first time Gap will accept transactions for its merchandise over the Web.
Probably the coolest thing there - besides the khakis, of course - is Virtual Style, an area that uses Macromedia's Shockwave animation technology to help shoppers mix and match different items and see how they'll look as outfits. Actual photographs from fashion shoots win out over cartoon-style illustrations here, so the styles customers create look model-good.
"We wanted our online shopping experience to be just as easy as shopping in any of our stores," Gap marketing VP Michael McCadden said of the site, which the company asserts is one of the only non-catalog retailers to flog its wares online.
The virtual store offers the sort of clothes that have come to define the 1990s' urban, middlebrow zeitgeist - "essential" denims, sweatshirts, turtlenecks, and button-downs for men and women - and a smattering of the latest "fashion" items. Customers can select from a wider choice of sizes than offered at The Gap's 1,500 outlets. A related Baby Gap site remains under construction. (6.Nov.97)
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Merger delayed: A routine antitrust review has delayed Apple Computer's pending acquisition of iconoclastic clonemaker Power Computing's Macintosh operations, Power's corporate counsel told the Associated Press on Wednesday.
Apple agreed in September to a US$100 million stock swap to acquire Power Computing's license for the Macintosh operating system and customer database, effectively eliminating the clone market. The move came after interim CEO Steve Jobs took the hard line on OS licensing and accused clonemakers of cutting into Apple's profit margins.
The Justice Department has requested a sheaf of documents from the company, some with little relation to the planned acquisition, corporate counsel John Teets told the AP. The company indicated that federal investigators may be seeking documents to support its antitrust case against Microsoft. (6.Nov.97)
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ScandinaviaSearch: In its first move into Europe, regional guide provider CitySearch has formed a partnership with one of Scandinavia's largest media companies to bring its Web-based regional guide services to Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
CitySearch said today it had joined with Schibsted ASA - publishers of Aftonbladet, Sweden's largest newspaper - Norway's two largest papers, and a string of TV stations and film-production holdings.
Of greater relevance is Schibsted's co-ownership of Scandinavia Online, Norway's largest Web-based online service, which reaches two-thirds of Norway's Internet households. Scandinavia Online is now expanding into Sweden and Denmark.
Using the CitySearch model of creating original, grassroots-produced content instead of using repurposed material, Scandinavia Online will operate the region's CitySearch sites in cooperation with local content partners in each city, with material produced in native languages. (6.Nov.97)
Wired News reporters Randolph Court and Kaitlin Quistgaard contributed to this report.
