After broad hints from CEO Bob Davis at a Hambrecht & Quist conference last week (CI No 3,400), Lycos Inc has unveiled a three-year technology and marketing alliance with AT&T WorldNet. Eight weeks in the making, the deal has four main parts. First, the partners will launch Lycos Online Powered by AT&T WorldNet Service, aping in name if not in form rival Yahoo! Online Powered by MCI. Yahoo’s internet access service costs $14.95 per month, but Lycos has yet to settle on a figure – though AT&T’s current charge is $19.95 with the first month free. Both Lycos and AT&T say they will commit significant resources to marketing this service. Second, AT&T is paying many millions to provide its own marketing content to a Personal Communications Center, which will be hosted on the Lycos web site. Third, a technology agreement will see AT&T working to develop point-and-click telephone directories and voice-enabled internet chat. We’re taking the internet from being an information resource with rudimentary communications like email to being something robust, rich and powerful, said Mike Miller for AT&T. Finally, Lycos subsidiary Tripod, a web community company in the Geocities mold, will be hosted on AT&T’s web site. Lycos says it is not merely fighting a rearguard action against Yahoo and the other search engines. Officials point to Lycos as the web’s fastest-growing site, calculated by individual visitors, on March’s RelevantKnowledge survey. Yahoo’s vice-president of business development, Ellen Siminoff, has another view. Copying I guess is the sign of flattery, she says. Yahoo, which topped the RelevantKnowledge survey to Lycos’ sixth, inked its deal with MCI in March.
