Only days after Microsoft launched its own search engine it has betrayed a somewhat surprising lack of faith in the same (CI No 3,491). Instead of MSN Internet Search, Infoseek Inc has landed the plum contract to be the exclusive provider of search and directory services to Microsoft subsidiary WebTV. How can this be? Well, it didn’t hurt that Infoseek actually paid WebTV $26m for the two-year agreement. In return, Infoseek gets to manage ad sales for online searches. Plus the search engine gets exposure to the mega-corporations’ maybe-mythical El Dorado: that vast herd of new home users who have never used a personal computer, much less owned one, and who, it is thought, will flock to access the internet via their television. Well, maybe. WebTV boasts that 80% of subscribers have never or rarely been online before, and yet that they dial up three times a day to generate 40 million page views. Infoseek must like those numbers. It’s shelling out $15m for the first five quarters and another $8m for the remainder of the contract. WebTV promises at least 4.5 billion impressions. Infoseek gets to keep all revenue raised in the first two years. After that, the companies say they will share the profits equally. That seems harsh. To capitalize on this costly-but-tempting opportunity, Infoseek says it has had to create a separate, dedicated sales team.
