USWeb Corp, the Santa Clara, California-based internet services firm that staged its initial public offering on Nasdaq at the end of last year (CI No 3,306), is to spend some of the proceeds on the acquisition of W3-design, a 35-person professional web development firm, on undisclosed terms. W3, a mature four years old, claims to have been one of the earliest companies to focus on web development, and says it’s been profitable since day one. The agreement to acquire Los Angeles, California-based W3 was actually finalized just before USWeb’s IPO, which garnered the company $37.5m for 16.4% of its shares, considerably less than it had hoped for. The W3 development team will now have access to the dozens of developers already affiliated with or owned by USWeb, and will be operated as a separate unit under the name USWeb/W3-design.
