Excite
Encyclopedia
Excite is a collection of Internet
sites and services owned by IAC Search & Media, which is a subsidiary of InterActive Corporation (IAC). Launched in 1994, it is an online service offering a variety of content, including an Internet portal
, a search engine
, a web-based email
, instant messaging
, stock quotes, and a customizable user homepage
. The content is collated from over 100 different sources. In the 1990s, it was one of the most recognized brands on the Internet
.
, Joe Kraus
, Mark Van Haren, Ryan McIntyre, Ben Lutch and Martin Reinfried, who were all students at Stanford University
. In July 1994 International Data Group paid them $100,000 to develop an online service. In January 1995, Vinod Khosla
(himself a former Stanford student), a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, arranged a $250,000 first round backing for the project with $1.5 million in ten months. Soon thereafter, Geoff Yang of Institutional Venture Partners brought in an additional $1.5 million in financing, and Excite was formally launched in December 1995. In January 1996, George Bell joined Excite as its Chief Executive Officer
. Excite also bought two search engines (Magellan and WebCrawler
), and signed exclusive distribution agreements with Netscape
, Microsoft
, Apple
, and other companies.
On April 4, 1996, Excite went public with an initial offering
of two million shares. In June 1997, Intuit, maker of Quicken
and TurboTax
, purchased a 19% stake in Excite and finalized a seven-year partnership deal. On October 16, 1997, Excite purchased Netbot, a comparison shopping agent
. At the same time Intuit announced the launch of Excite Business & Investing. Later that year a deal was finalized with Ticketmaster
to provide direct online ticketing. On March 31, 1998, Excite reported a net loss of approximately $30.2 million and according to its first quarter report it only had enough available capital to meet obligations through December. In December 1998, Yahoo!
was in negotiations to purchase Excite for $5.5 billion to $6 billion. However, prompted by Kleiner Perkins, @Home Network
's Chairman and CEO, Thomas Jermoluk met with Excite’s chairman and CEO George Bell on December 19, and Excite was subsequently acquired by @Home Network, on January 19, 1999.
According to Justin Rohrlich, writing for Minyanville.com, later in 1999, two graduate students at Stanford University
, Sergey Brin
and Larry Page
, decided that Google
, the search engine they had developed, was taking up time they should have been using to study. They went to Bell and offered it to him for $1 million, but Bell rejected the offer, and later threw Vinod Khosla
, one of Excite's venture capitalists, out of his office after he had negotiated Brin and Page down to $750,000. Excite's refusal to buy what became a $180 billion company by 2010 was labeled by Rohrlich a "stupid business decision".
in 1999 became one of the largest mergers of two Internet
companies ever; it combined @Home's high speed Internet services and existing portal with Excite's search engine and portal. The combined company also moved towards personalized web portal content.
The new company became "Excite@Home", though the stock symbol and the company's name in regulatory filing records remained as "At Home Corporation" (ATHM). Six months after the merger, Tom Jermoluk stepped down as CEO of Excite@Home and Excite’s George Bell
, who was the President of the Excite division of @Home after the merger, became the new CEO of combined Excite@Home. Jermoluk remained Chairman of the Board.
Following the merger, the Excite division purchased iMall, as well as online greeting card
company Blue Mountain Arts. Excite also acquired photo-sharing company Webshots
. Excite furthermore paid for sponsorship of Infiniti
Indy car
driver Eddie Cheever, Jr., through the 2000 and 2001 racing seasons. However, the merger between Excite and @Home fell disastrously short of expectations. Online advertising revenue plummeted, while cable network ISP revenue continued to grow. On September 21, 2000, after stock value had dropped 90%, George Bell announced plans to step down as CEO within six months. On April 23, 2001, Excite@Home announced Patti S. Hart, the former CEO of Telocity, would become its third CEO in three years. In the same announcement, George Bell resigned and left the company completely. The company also reported first-quarter net loss of $61.6 million, compared with a loss of $4.6 million in the same period the prior year.
On June 11, 2001, Excite@Home announced that it had raised $100 million in financing from Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co. Part of the deal was that the loan was repayable immediately if Excite@Home stock was delisted by Nasdaq
. The loan, structured as a note convertible into shares of Excite, had an interest rate of zero. By August 20 of that year, Excite@Home had replaced its auditors Ernst & Young
with PricewaterhouseCoopers
. This triggered a demand from Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co for the immediate repayment of $50 million in debt. Furthermore, Cox Cable and Comcast
announced that they would separate from Excite@Home by the first quarter of 2002.
On September 13, 2001, Excite@Home sold Blue Mountain Arts to American Greetings
for less than 5% of what it had paid less than two years earlier. On October 1, 2001, Excite@Home filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District
of California
. The company's remaining 1,350 employees were laid off
over the following months. As part of the agreement, @Home's national high-speed fiber network access would be sold back to AT&T
. @Home Liquidating Trust became the successor company to Excite@Home, charged with the sale of all assets of the former company.
At the end of 2001, the Webshots assets were purchased by the company's founders for $2.4 million in cash from the Bankruptcy Court.
had quietly started designing a new, yet familiar, Excite website hoping that it could acquire the Excite.com domain name
and brand in the course of the bankruptcy proceedings. IWon.com made a joint bid with Seattle's InfoSpace
to purchase the domain and brand. On November 28, the court accepted the bid and gave iWon less than three weeks to launch a new Excite portal. Bill Daugherty, iWon's founder and then co-chief executive at the time told The New York Times
, "I feel like a guy who lived through a hurricane, got pounded and pounded and managed to survive when everyone else was destroyed. Suddenly you walk outside and because of the storm you have beachfront property. That's what Excite is to us."
On December 16, 2001, iWon launched the new Excite portal and transferred millions of Excite users to its new home. iWon changed its corporate name to Excite Network, and continued to operate Excite, iWon, and a third portal, MyWay. Outside of the United States, Excite Italia took control of portals in UK, Germany
, Spain
, France
, Italy
, Netherlands
, Poland
, Switzerland
, and Austria
. Infospace, for its part, owned and operated the web search function on Excite. This proved to be a short-sighted arrangement as searching became big business on the Internet in the ensuing years.
and Juno Online, which offered free or low-cost dial-up access in the United States
, Excite started offering its own "no-pay" service for private customers by partnering with 1stUp.com to create FreeLane by Excite: 1stUp would allow Excite customers to download software in order for them to be able log-on to the Internet. The software would then rotate a series of sponsored banner advertisements on the user's computer while they surfed the Internet. 1stUp.com soon went out of business, and Excite switched to another partner named WorldShare, rebranding FreeLane as FreeLane version 2.0. As of March 1, 2001 FreeLane was discontinued.
) in March 2004. Ask Jeeves promised to rejuvenate iWon and Excite, but did not. Ask Jeeves management became distracted, according to the East Bay Business Times, first by a search feature arms race with Google
and Yahoo!, and then by its merger with Barry Diller
's InterActive Corporation, announced in March 2005. "Hopefully, as we start to invest more and get the staff in place and some of the changes to the portal properties that we want, we hope to see (revenue) grow back in the latter half of the year," said Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz during a conference call with analysts on April 27, 2005.
On May 20, 2005, Ask Jeeves made two announcements regarding the rejuvenation of the Excite brand. First, it had acquired Excite Italia B.V. (the operator of Excite Europe), from Tiscali
, S.p.A. Secondly, had reached a comprehensive settlement with InfoSpace involving Excite in the United States whereby Ask Jeeves and InfoSpace would share marketing costs and revenue from the Excite web search function. Regarding the acquisition, Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz said: "We look forward to working with InfoSpace to enhance the search experience on Excite, now that our interests are aligned." On October 17, 2007 GOADV
a media company specialised in generating traffic on the Internet, announced the completion of its acquisition of the European Excite group of companies.
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
sites and services owned by IAC Search & Media, which is a subsidiary of InterActive Corporation (IAC). Launched in 1994, it is an online service offering a variety of content, including an Internet portal
Web portal
A web portal or links page is a web site that functions as a point of access to information in the World Wide Web. A portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way....
, a search engine
Web search engine
A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web and FTP servers. The search results are generally presented in a list of results often referred to as SERPS, or "search engine results pages". The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other...
, a web-based email
Web-based email
The term Webmail is used to describe two things. One use of the word is to describe a Webmail client: an email client implemented as a web application accessed via a web browser. This article focuses in this use of the term...
, instant messaging
Instant messaging
Instant Messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based chatting communication in push mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet...
, stock quotes, and a customizable user homepage
Homepage
A home page or homepage has various related meanings to do with web sites:* It most often refers to the initial or main web page of a web site, sometimes called the front page ....
. The content is collated from over 100 different sources. In the 1990s, it was one of the most recognized brands on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
.
Early years
Excite was founded as Architext in 1994 by Graham SpencerGraham Spencer
Graham Spencer was a co-founder of the Excite search engine along with Joe Kraus. Later, he also co-founded JotSpot with Kraus. Google acquired JotSpot in 2006.In August 2005 he was honored by InfoWorld Magazine as one of the 2005 Innovators of the Year....
, Joe Kraus
Joe Kraus
Joe Kraus is the founder of Excite, JotSpot, and DigitalConsumer.org, along with his long-time business partner Graham Spencer. Currently, Kraus is an Investment Partner on the Google Ventures team....
, Mark Van Haren, Ryan McIntyre, Ben Lutch and Martin Reinfried, who were all students at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. In July 1994 International Data Group paid them $100,000 to develop an online service. In January 1995, Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla is an Indian-born American venture capitalist and an influential personality in Silicon Valley....
(himself a former Stanford student), a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, arranged a $250,000 first round backing for the project with $1.5 million in ten months. Soon thereafter, Geoff Yang of Institutional Venture Partners brought in an additional $1.5 million in financing, and Excite was formally launched in December 1995. In January 1996, George Bell joined Excite as its Chief Executive Officer
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
. Excite also bought two search engines (Magellan and WebCrawler
WebCrawler
WebCrawler is a metasearch engine that blends the top search results from Google, Yahoo!, Bing Search , Ask.com, About.com, MIVA, LookSmart and other popular search engines. WebCrawler also provides users the option to search for images, audio, video, news, yellow pages and white pages...
), and signed exclusive distribution agreements with Netscape
Netscape
Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...
, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, Apple
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
, and other companies.
On April 4, 1996, Excite went public with an initial offering
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
of two million shares. In June 1997, Intuit, maker of Quicken
Quicken
Quicken is a personal finance management tool developed by Intuit, Inc.Quicken runs on Windows and Macintosh systems. Previous versions ran on DOS. An online version is also available. The last version of Quicken for Macintosh computers was Quicken Essentials for Mac released in February 2010...
and TurboTax
TurboTax
TurboTax is an American tax preparation software package developed by Michael A. Chipman of Chipsoft in the mid-1980s. TurboTax became an Intuit product as a result of the 1993 acquisition of its creator, San Diego-based Chipsoft. Chipsoft, now known as Intuit Consumer Tax Group, is still based in...
, purchased a 19% stake in Excite and finalized a seven-year partnership deal. On October 16, 1997, Excite purchased Netbot, a comparison shopping agent
Comparison shopping agent
Comparison shopping agents, also called shopbots,, are web-based intelligent software applications that can help online shoppers find lower price for commodities or services. Price comparison services were the earliest services provided by a comparison shopping agent...
. At the same time Intuit announced the launch of Excite Business & Investing. Later that year a deal was finalized with Ticketmaster
Ticketmaster
Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc. is an independent American ticket sales and distribution company based in West Hollywood, California, USA, with operations in many countries around the world. In 2010 it merged with Live Nation to become Live Nation Entertainment...
to provide direct online ticketing. On March 31, 1998, Excite reported a net loss of approximately $30.2 million and according to its first quarter report it only had enough available capital to meet obligations through December. In December 1998, Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
was in negotiations to purchase Excite for $5.5 billion to $6 billion. However, prompted by Kleiner Perkins, @Home Network
@Home Network
@Home Network was a high-speed cable Internet service provider from 1996 to 2002. It was founded by Milo Medin, cable companies TCI, Comcast, and Cox Communications, and William Randolph Hearst III, who was their first CEO, as a joint venture to produce high-speed cable Internet service through...
's Chairman and CEO, Thomas Jermoluk met with Excite’s chairman and CEO George Bell on December 19, and Excite was subsequently acquired by @Home Network, on January 19, 1999.
According to Justin Rohrlich, writing for Minyanville.com, later in 1999, two graduate students at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin
Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin is a Russian-born American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the largest internet companies. , his personal wealth is estimated to be $16.7 billion....
and Larry Page
Larry Page
Lawrence "Larry" Page is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Sergey Brin, is best known as the co-founder of Google. As of April 4, 2011, he is also the chief executive of Google, as announced on January 20, 2011...
, decided that Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
, the search engine they had developed, was taking up time they should have been using to study. They went to Bell and offered it to him for $1 million, but Bell rejected the offer, and later threw Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla is an Indian-born American venture capitalist and an influential personality in Silicon Valley....
, one of Excite's venture capitalists, out of his office after he had negotiated Brin and Page down to $750,000. Excite's refusal to buy what became a $180 billion company by 2010 was labeled by Rohrlich a "stupid business decision".
Excite@Home
The $6.7 billion merger of Excite and @Home Network@Home Network
@Home Network was a high-speed cable Internet service provider from 1996 to 2002. It was founded by Milo Medin, cable companies TCI, Comcast, and Cox Communications, and William Randolph Hearst III, who was their first CEO, as a joint venture to produce high-speed cable Internet service through...
in 1999 became one of the largest mergers of two Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
companies ever; it combined @Home's high speed Internet services and existing portal with Excite's search engine and portal. The combined company also moved towards personalized web portal content.
The new company became "Excite@Home", though the stock symbol and the company's name in regulatory filing records remained as "At Home Corporation" (ATHM). Six months after the merger, Tom Jermoluk stepped down as CEO of Excite@Home and Excite’s George Bell
George Bell
George Bell may refer to:*George Joseph Bell , Scottish jurist*George Bell , British publisher, founder of George Bell & Sons*George Bell , American Civil War sailor and Medal of Honor recipient...
, who was the President of the Excite division of @Home after the merger, became the new CEO of combined Excite@Home. Jermoluk remained Chairman of the Board.
Following the merger, the Excite division purchased iMall, as well as online greeting card
E-card
An e-card is similar to a postcard or greeting card, with the primary difference being that it is created using digital media instead of paper or other traditional materials. E-cards are made available by publishers usually on various Internet sites, where they can be sent to a recipient, usually...
company Blue Mountain Arts. Excite also acquired photo-sharing company Webshots
Webshots
-History:Webshots was created in 1995 by Auralis, Inc. in San Diego, California. It was initially a sports oriented screen saver sold at retail for desktop computers. Founders Andrew Laakmann, Danna Laakmann, Nick Wilder, and Narendra Rocherolle migrated the desktop software to the Web and became...
. Excite furthermore paid for sponsorship of Infiniti
Infiniti
is the luxury division of automaker Nissan. Infiniti officially started selling vehicles on November 8, 1989 in North America. Marketing operations have since grown to include the Middle East, South Korea, Russia, Taiwan, China, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. Infiniti began sales in additional...
Indy car
IndyCar Series
The IZOD IndyCar Series is the premier level of American open wheel racing. The current championship, founded by Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Tony George, began in 1996 as a competitor to CART known as the Indy Racing League . Citing CART's increasing reliance on expensive machinery and...
driver Eddie Cheever, Jr., through the 2000 and 2001 racing seasons. However, the merger between Excite and @Home fell disastrously short of expectations. Online advertising revenue plummeted, while cable network ISP revenue continued to grow. On September 21, 2000, after stock value had dropped 90%, George Bell announced plans to step down as CEO within six months. On April 23, 2001, Excite@Home announced Patti S. Hart, the former CEO of Telocity, would become its third CEO in three years. In the same announcement, George Bell resigned and left the company completely. The company also reported first-quarter net loss of $61.6 million, compared with a loss of $4.6 million in the same period the prior year.
On June 11, 2001, Excite@Home announced that it had raised $100 million in financing from Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co. Part of the deal was that the loan was repayable immediately if Excite@Home stock was delisted by Nasdaq
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...
. The loan, structured as a note convertible into shares of Excite, had an interest rate of zero. By August 20 of that year, Excite@Home had replaced its auditors Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms, along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers ....
with PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers is a global professional services firm headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest professional services firm measured by revenues and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms....
. This triggered a demand from Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co for the immediate repayment of $50 million in debt. Furthermore, Cox Cable and Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
announced that they would separate from Excite@Home by the first quarter of 2002.
On September 13, 2001, Excite@Home sold Blue Mountain Arts to American Greetings
American Greetings
American Greetings Corporation, Inc. is the world's largest publicly-traded greeting card company. It is based in Brooklyn, Ohio and sells paper greeting cards, electronic greeting cards, party products , and electronic expressive content...
for less than 5% of what it had paid less than two years earlier. On October 1, 2001, Excite@Home filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District
Northern District
Northern District or North District may refer to:*North District, Israel*North District, Hong Kong*North District, Tainan, Tainan, Republic of China *North Delhi District of the National Capital Territory of Delhi in India...
of California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. The company's remaining 1,350 employees were laid off
Layoff
Layoff , also called redundancy in the UK, is the temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or a group of employees for business reasons, such as when certain positions are no longer necessary or when a business slow-down occurs...
over the following months. As part of the agreement, @Home's national high-speed fiber network access would be sold back to AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
. @Home Liquidating Trust became the successor company to Excite@Home, charged with the sale of all assets of the former company.
At the end of 2001, the Webshots assets were purchased by the company's founders for $2.4 million in cash from the Bankruptcy Court.
Excite Network
During the collapse of Excite@Home, Irvington, New York–based iWon.comIWon
IWon.com is a free casual game site and web portal that offers the chance to win cash and prizes through activities such as clicking through links or playing online games...
had quietly started designing a new, yet familiar, Excite website hoping that it could acquire the Excite.com domain name
Domain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....
and brand in the course of the bankruptcy proceedings. IWon.com made a joint bid with Seattle's InfoSpace
InfoSpace
Infospace provides metasearch and private-label Internet search services for consumers and businesses.InfoSpace's flagship metasearch site is Dogpile; its other consumer brands are WebCrawler, Nation, DoGreatGood and MetaCrawler.-History:...
to purchase the domain and brand. On November 28, the court accepted the bid and gave iWon less than three weeks to launch a new Excite portal. Bill Daugherty, iWon's founder and then co-chief executive at the time told The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, "I feel like a guy who lived through a hurricane, got pounded and pounded and managed to survive when everyone else was destroyed. Suddenly you walk outside and because of the storm you have beachfront property. That's what Excite is to us."
On December 16, 2001, iWon launched the new Excite portal and transferred millions of Excite users to its new home. iWon changed its corporate name to Excite Network, and continued to operate Excite, iWon, and a third portal, MyWay. Outside of the United States, Excite Italia took control of portals in UK, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, and Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
. Infospace, for its part, owned and operated the web search function on Excite. This proved to be a short-sighted arrangement as searching became big business on the Internet in the ensuing years.
FreeLane by Excite
In a bid to compete against Internet Service Providers like NetZeroNetZero
NetZero is an Internet service provider based in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California. It is a subsidiary of United Online, owner of Juno Online Services and BlueLight Internet Services. The current chairman, president, and CEO of United Online is Mark Goldston.- History :NetZero launched in...
and Juno Online, which offered free or low-cost dial-up access in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Excite started offering its own "no-pay" service for private customers by partnering with 1stUp.com to create FreeLane by Excite: 1stUp would allow Excite customers to download software in order for them to be able log-on to the Internet. The software would then rotate a series of sponsored banner advertisements on the user's computer while they surfed the Internet. 1stUp.com soon went out of business, and Excite switched to another partner named WorldShare, rebranding FreeLane as FreeLane version 2.0. As of March 1, 2001 FreeLane was discontinued.
Excite Tickets Portal
Excite.com features a number of domains that cater to different services. Their events portal is essentially a ticket selling website where users can buy tickets and search through thousands of events and venues. The powerful search engine capabilities of the Excite server are utilized on this website to help the user search for tickets and events.Excite Degrees Portal
Recently Excite.com has also started an education portal that can be used by people to search for and apply for different degrees and online courses. The Excite Degrees portal features a list of thousands of educational institutes across America for prospective students to browse through and apply at.Acquisition by Ask Jeeves
Excite continued to operate until the Excite Network was acquired by Ask Jeeves (now Ask.comAsk.com
Ask is a Q&A focused search engine founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California. The original software was implemented by Gary Chevsky from his own design. Warthen, Chevsky, Justin Grant, and others built the early AskJeeves.com website around that core engine...
) in March 2004. Ask Jeeves promised to rejuvenate iWon and Excite, but did not. Ask Jeeves management became distracted, according to the East Bay Business Times, first by a search feature arms race with Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
and Yahoo!, and then by its merger with Barry Diller
Barry Diller
Barry Charles Diller is the Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp and the media executive responsible for the creation of Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting.-Early life:...
's InterActive Corporation, announced in March 2005. "Hopefully, as we start to invest more and get the staff in place and some of the changes to the portal properties that we want, we hope to see (revenue) grow back in the latter half of the year," said Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz during a conference call with analysts on April 27, 2005.
On May 20, 2005, Ask Jeeves made two announcements regarding the rejuvenation of the Excite brand. First, it had acquired Excite Italia B.V. (the operator of Excite Europe), from Tiscali
Tiscali
Tiscali may refer to:*Tiscali, an archaeological village of Nuragici people, in Sardinia, Italy, notable because it was completely inside a huge cavern*Tiscali SpA, a telecom company based in Italy*Tiscali TV , multiple uses...
, S.p.A. Secondly, had reached a comprehensive settlement with InfoSpace involving Excite in the United States whereby Ask Jeeves and InfoSpace would share marketing costs and revenue from the Excite web search function. Regarding the acquisition, Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz said: "We look forward to working with InfoSpace to enhance the search experience on Excite, now that our interests are aligned." On October 17, 2007 GOADV
GOADV
GoAdv The GoAdv Group is Europe’s 4th fastest growing larger digital media company . It is European leader in the creation of multilingual content on demand...
a media company specialised in generating traffic on the Internet, announced the completion of its acquisition of the European Excite group of companies.