Lycos wins IE 4.0 Channel Guide

Internet search company Lycos will produce and host the Internet Explorer4.0 Channel Guide for Microsoft, it was announced today. Lycos will alsoserve as the exclusive search engine for the Channel Guide, due September30th with the final release of IE 4.0. The real surprise here is thatMicrosoft would simply give away such a key component of IE 4.0: No onesuspected that they wouldn't do it themselves. The other surprise is thatthey picked Lycos, not one of the major search companies, such as AltaVista.

"The Channel Guide really makes sense either to do entirely ourselves or with one partner. It wouldn't have made sense to offer four identical capabilities" in the Channel Guide, said Microsoft's Will Poole. "We lookedfor a combination of [things], and they won."

Poole said Microsoft looked at a number of companies before choosing Lycos.

Apparently, the deal was made earlier this summer, though it was onlyannounced today. The Channel Guide will be updated with a Lycos look andfeel by the final release of IE 4.0. Lycos, for their part, received somecash up-front from Microsoft and will likely generate revenue from otherprovisions in the contract over time.

"It represents a wonderful branding and traffic opportunity," said Bob Davis, president and CEO of Lycos, referring to his company's coup