Netscape Communications Corp yesterday got itself what every self-respecting free web information hub needs these days: a free email service. The company signed a strategic agreement with Usa.Net, which has been offering free email for a year and half, to add free email to its Netcenter web site, which now has 4.3 million members since its launch seven months ago. Membership is free, but users have to fill a detailed registration form. The new service will be known as Netscape WebMail by Usa.Net. Netscape could not comment on whether or not it had invested any money in Usa.Net, Netcenter’s general manager and senior VP Mike Homer said the deal would involve revenue-sharing from advertisements. However, last week Usa.Net announced a free email service for American Express Co cardholders, about a year after American Express had taken a stake in the company. Netscape is a company in a hurry. It has an initiative inside the company called Project 60, which involves announcing and rolling out all the essential elements to Netcenter to make it a competitor with other web portals, such as Yahoo! Inc and Excite Inc. These features will include a Netscape-branded search engine, personalization, directory services and broader content channels. Netscape currently offers nine search engines from eight vendors on Netcenter. Homer said Netscape will partner with an existing search engine company to offer the Netscape-branded search tool, but will continue to offer other vendor’s search engines. The free email will roll out at some point within this 60 day period. Netscape is also looking at other ways of tying users of its clients to Netcenter, through things like automatic software updates and by other browser-specific techniques. It thinks it’s got one of the best brands on the internet with Netscape – not necessarily Netcenter – and is frantically looking at ways to get itself a reputation as a player in the portal/hub market. The company estimates it has a about 70 million copies of Navigator and/or Communicator out there in total. Of those, Homer said about half have their home page left as netscape.com, which is the default. Also, some of the more infrequent users are not aware of how to change their home page settings, which boosts traffic to Netscape’s site. Homer said that in February the company got about 24 million unique visitors to its web site a month, up from 13 million in December, two months after it launched Netcenter. Colorado Springs-based Usa.Net claims 3.6 million subscribers. President and chief executive John Street claimed that its service was the first free, permanent and portable email around. It features seven mailboxes, address book synchronization, vacation responses, pre-determined responses and other anti- spamming technology, plus foreign language translation. None of Usa.Net’s own subscribers will be affected by this deal, said Homer. Microsoft Corp acquired rival free emailer Hotmail Corp in January.
