What the web needs now is, of course, a new portal. Mill Valley, California-based Z.Com has leapt to fill the void. To be fair, the company recognizes that the market is extremely competitive just at the moment, so it has tried to co-opt as many potential rivals as possible. Z.com has signed co-operative deals on web searching with Yahoo, Excite, Snap, Hotbot, NetFind and Switchboard. The BBC and Time Warner Inc are supplying news, while classifieds come courtesy of Classifieds2000. In short, Z.com looks exactly like every other portal in town. No surprises there: the site was launched by Jeff Gold, who also founded FM Net, Musictown, Go Chat! and Go.com. Gold’s most recent win came earlier this year when the Walt Disney Company acquired Go.com for its joint venture with Infoseek Corp (CI No 3,500). Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Greet Street, the creator of E- greetings, has changed its name to E-greetings Network. Greet Street is nearly five years old but has yet to live up to its early promise. Executives blame the internet for being rudimentary and for failing to catch up to the vision outlined in Greet Street’s original business plans. A new logo and an updated web site at http://www.egreetings.com accompany the change of name.
