Rome Microsoft’s site, MSN.com, scored the first millionaire contract. Even before the official launch, the Web that Microsoft is developing to beat competitors on the Net, won a contract of 60 million dollars. To pay are four of the major Internet search engines: Altavista, Lycos, Infoseek and Snap. This is the total amount that the four companies will pay to Microsoft for a place of honor on the MNS.com search page. The idea is not original, Microsoft’s business model is borrowed from that of its rival Netscape Communications. The Netscape, in fact, was the first company to charge the search engines by ensuring them a visibility of rigor within the pages of their site. The same technique will now be adopted by Microsoft. The four search engines will appear on the search page of the new Web. A deal that offers good business prospects to both parties. If on the one hand Microsoft will collect a total of 60 million dollars a year to host the search engines on the site, on the other Altavista, Lycos, Infoseek and Snap can count on the high access that the MNS.com site will undoubtedly guarantee. But it is also another reason that has led companies of this caliber to make deals with the colossus of Redmond, Washington state: the fact that all Internet Explorer users who click on the search button of the browser will be catapulted on the pages of one of the four search engines. In short, 60 million dollars to have more visibility, more users and then more advertising to sell.
A choice also dictated by the growing success of Internet Explorer that now, in some countries, exceeds the popularity of the Netscape browser. Given that some of the services that will become part of MNS.com are already present in Netcenter, the Web of Netscape, everything would lead to think that companies like Altavista, Lycos and Infoseek prefer, as they say in the jargon, to have the foot in two brackets. Microsoft hosted search engines will accompany its own search service, a system developed in collaboration with the Inktomi company that built the Wired: HotBot group engine. The MSN.com site will debut within the next month of October. MSN.com will follow the philosophy of the competitors, of sites like Yahoo, and will contain a series of links and information immediately accessible from the first page of the site. And for the search engines the model adopted will be very similar to that of Netcenter: search engines will succeed in rotation at each access to the site. A winning business strategy, at least judging by the results obtained by Netscape for its Netcenter: a turnover of 38.6 million dollars in the last fiscal quarter