Since announcing that Netscape Communications Corp was looking to provide its own branded search engine on its web site, Netcenter last week, it comes as no surprise to hear that chief executive Jim Barksdale has been saying that all the company’s contracts with search engine firms featured on the site are likely to change after the contracts expire next week. Netscape currently features most the major engines on its site: Yahoo!, Excite & its Webcrawler engine, Lycos, HotBot, Infoseek, Snap!, AOL NetFind and LookSmart. Netscape is likely to partner very closely with one of those to create a Netscape-branded search engine as party of its campaign to drive traffic to its site, rather than merely act as a gateway to other companies. Barksdale, talking to journalists in Europe, noted that the web site – which may not be called Netcenter for much longer – generated revenues of $100m a year, though it was not clear to which 12 months he was referring.
