Disney may (update: WILL) abandon GO.com

The Mouse that bailed

[Jaguar_Joe]

Article in Financial Times here [news.ft.com].

[drbill]

Pete I have to agree with you " First banner I have clicked in years"

[mayor]

Exerpt from [cnnfn.cnn.com...]

"The Burbank, Calif.-based company said a streamlined version of GO.com will operate for "a period of time" to allow for transition of its users and will also operate the Infoseek search engine during this period."

So Go will go away, but will Infoseek? Let's hope not and let's hope someone that knows how to run a search engine revives IS.

[WebGuerrilla]

Back when Disney first bought Infoseek, I remeber reading a great article somewhere entitled something like "Death of a Brand." The whole piece was about the stupidity of getting rid of such a well established name as InfoSeek. (Can you honestly think of a better name for a search engine?)

At the time the article quite contrary to the general consensus that with a company like Disney behind it, InfoSeek could only become better.

It quickly became obvious that the author was right on the mark. To this day, we all still refer to it as InfoSeek. The best Disney could ever do is to get us to accept the term Infoseek/Go.

Hopefully, someone will buy the name and database and bring back InfoSeek. Now that we have transitioned into an era that is a bit more accepting of pay-for-inclusion, it seems that it would be quite possible for a small streamlined InfoSeek to become profitable. Maybe not as a high traffic portal, but certainly as a backend provider. It would be nice to see Inktomi and Looksmart have a true competitor. :)

[chiyo]

Take away the preferred listings and the search interface and the results were good, almost InfoSeek aka 1996 like... Still, who would want to buy a Search Engine these days?

Board Game?

GO straight to jail.. Do not pass GO...

[Hope]

This is a sad day. I cannot believe that Disney has totally distroyed the best search engine. When it was Infoseek, there was no better engine out there. Then Disney got their dirty, greedy little hands on it and it is gone. Disney should be ashamed of themselves.

[Mike_Mackin]

YA Hope:

I'm thinking of burning a pile of ANNETTE FUNICHELLO memorabilia in front of Disneyland !!!

[mnw]

Don't do that. The Annette stuff may be worth more than the value of the GO network right now. :)

[Machiavelli]

tedster wrote: If Walt had that attitude, the world might never have enjoyed Mickey Mouse.

And the world would have been a happier place. :)

[backus]

I'll never watch my copy of Snow White ever again. Maybe some Japanese cartoonist will buy GO, and turn it into a Manga portal!!! Woohoo! I remember, when I were a lad, all I used was t'Infoseek, back in Yorkshire. Oh well, times change. We can go down with Disney's sinking ship, we must build a better Internet, so the cyber-world can live as one! Vive la resistance! DMOZ all the way!!!

[Mike_Mackin]

>go down with Disney's sinking ship

you mean THE BIG RED BOAT :)

[backus]

> You mean THE BIG RED BOAT

Steam boat Willie? Hmmm... could be.

[luckynh]

ANALYSTS NOT SURPRISED

"The competitive factors that initially compelled us to establish a separately traded class of common stock tied to our Internet operations have fundamentally changed," Eisner said.

[news.excite.com...]

[CaveToad]

I concur, great banner. Absolutely got me here. Yeah, if corporate america types read these as they are rumored to do on occasion ( those with searchengine interests ), perhaps they'll pick up on our interest in Infoseek and dust it off and see what happens.

[backus]

What happens to Infoseek UK??????

[oLeon]

...and what happens to Infoseek.de?
Infoseek.de is owned by
Axel Springer Verlag (publisher)
Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck (publisher)
T-Online International (biggest provider in Germany)
Infoseek Corporation
(each of them owns 25%)

I donīt believe that the german engine wonīt survive due to the majority of the other partners, but:
really interesting is what will happen if Infoseek/Go sells its rights to the search-technology to someone else, and (I think itīs the same in the UK) Infoseek.de will have a problem because what shall they do without that technology that is its base?

[backus]

No, Infoseek UK points back to Go.com. I do believe it is doomed, my friend, doomed... *sniff*

[rencke]

backus: "Maybe some Japanese cartoonist will buy GO"

Actually that happened in November according to a note in Disney's FY 2000 statement. Dunno about cartoons though.

oLeon: "what will happen if Infoseek/Go sells its rights to the search-technology to someone else"

And suppose that someone is Terra Lycos who bought Raging Bull from AltaVista yesterday and paid in cash (!). Somehow I can't quite see these German heavyweights getting into a joint venture where everything depends on one of the partners. My guess is that the German holding company (Webseek GmbH) has a non-revocable license to Infoseek.

But: What will they do if all development at Infoseek stops? Continue on their own with or without the Japanese, or look for a new engine? Keeping in mind, that T-Online is not just Germany's biggest ISP, but in fact Europe's biggest - active also in Austria, Switzerland, France, Spain and Portugal. That is a really BIG question with potentially far reaching consequences for the SEO community.

[grnidone]

I think it'd be cool if our own Brett would buy Infoseek and keep it alive.

He makes the big bucks. He has to. He has that corner windowed office on the top floor.

;)

-G

[Brett_Tabke]

Word on the phone is that they are asking high 8 figures for it.

[tedres]

Go sold some technology to Inktomi - ultraseek and perhaps other stuff.

Oh, and don't you feel sorry for Go's advertising agency - just as their ads were getting off the ground, the product is killed :(
[adweek.com...]

[luckynh]

here is a list of news about Disney decision to close down.

[biz.yahoo.com...]
[dailynews.yahoo.com...]
[more.abcnews.go.com...]
[news.excite.com...]
[businesswire.com...]
[chicago.tribune.com...]
[lasvegassun.com...]
[latimes.com...]
[msnbc.com...]
[sunspot.net...]
[washingtonpost.com...]
[wired.com...]

[cirelle]

Disney probably didn't want to get sued by cmgi

[rcjordan]

You can't go out on the newswire now without wading through a half-dozen stories on GO. Take a look at the timeline on this thread, kudos to Jaguar Joe for being way ahead of the class on his reading assignment.

[Kamikaze]

It's too bad that we don't get to see the GO's interface for Valentine's day. Remember the awesome Halloween interface? That gave me a good laugh. Have you seen the latest Excite interface?

[NFFC]

They just put the GoGuide's in the waste bin:

"While we have been successful in partnering with GoTo for all future search queries from users who come to GO.com, the GO Guides community is not a part of this relationship. Regrettably, the GO Guides community has been disbanded, effective this month."

Via email.

[luckynh]

NFFC you beet me to it.. I got the same e-mail

"..We have endeavored to include transferring the
relationship with the GO Guides community as part of this effort - we
continue to view the GO Guides as one of the site's most valuable
assets..."

If it was such a "..valuable asset.." then why would the dump it?

IMHO This is sad :(