Last week, internet wannabe Zapata Corp promised a major and extremely significant acquisition of a well-known internet company, and so it proved. Zapata has bought the Attitude Network, probably best know by one of its subsidiary web sites, the Happy Puppy game information site. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Zapata, which these days prefers to be known by its domain, Zap.com, announced its entry into the internet market in April with the acquisition of defunct web magazines Word and Charged, which will re-launch next month. It also offered $1.7bn for Excite Inc in May, but was turned down. Attitude Network brings two million unique users a month. It is itself a mini-portal, acting as a gateway to six gaming sites, the most famous of which is happypuppy.com, a UK-based games download site, founded three years ago. The chairman of Attitude is Bill Rasmussen, who founded ESPN 20 years ago. This is the 31st web property Zapata has signed a letter of intent to acquire and more announcements are expected shortly. Zapata, formed by former US President, George Bush in 1953 as an oil and gas company, is on a mission to morph from being a fish oil processing company to the next portal, happy to trade ratings figures with the likes of Yahoo! Inc and America Online Inc.
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