The marriage between localized internet content providers CitySearch Inc and Zip2 Corp has been called off by mutual consent. While going over their merger plans over the past month or so, the two companies decided that it would not make sense because of differences in their technologies, product strategies and business models (CI No 3,384). To outsiders, the move to combine CitySearch’s guide to cities including New York, San Francisco as well as some in Europe and Australia with Zip2’s local newspaper-based guides with its Yellow Pages technology, seemed like a good fit. The pair say they will work together on future projects where appropriate, but intend to remain independent of each other. The deal was said to be worth about $300m in total.
