Go2Net Announces Joint Venture With Vulcan Ventures, Charter Communications, RCN Corporation, and High Speed Access Corporation - Company Business and Marketing

Cambridge Telcom Report, Oct 11, 1999

Go2Net, Inc., a network of branded, technology- and community-driven Web sites (http://www.go2net.com), Monday announced the formation of a new company, Broadband Partners, which is a joint venture among Go2Net, Vulcan Ventures, Inc., Charter Communications, RCN Corporation, and High Speed Access Corporation (HSA). Broadband Partners is being created to provide Internet portal services initially to customers of Charter Communications and RCN, and potentially to other MSOs in the future. Go2Net will own a minority equity interest in the joint venture.

Under the joint venture, Go2Net will distribute customized versions of its content, technologies and services via Broadband Partners to subscribers of Charter Communications, RCN, and other companies from the investment portfolio of Vulcan Ventures, Paul Allen's investment organization. The Go2Net Network features several of the Internet's leading destinations and services, including Go2Net.com, Silicon Investor, MetaCrawler, PlaySite, HyperMart and Authorize.net, among others. He is also a significant shareholder of Denver-based HSA, a leading provider of high speed Internet cable services, and Monday announced an investment in RCN, the nation's first and largest single-source, facilities-based provider of bundled communications services to the residential market.

"This is a significant extension and formalization of our March 16 agreement to provide Paul Allen's affiliated cable companies and their subscribers with access to Go2Net's portal services," said Russell C. Horowitz, Go2Net Chief Executive Officer. "We're looking forward to working with Vulcan, Charter, RCN and HSA to develop content, technologies and services for broadband platforms. This will add meaningful distribution opportunities and reach for Go2Net's offerings and is also an opportunity to extend Go2Net's ecommerce infrastructure to broadband environments."

William Savoy, president of Vulcan Ventures, added: "We have enjoyed our strategic relationship with Go2Net to-date and look forward to working closely with them on this and other initiatives to build upon the promise of our shared vision for the Wired World."

Broadband Partners will establish headquarters on the West Coast later this year. Management for the company has not yet been identified.

Go2Net is a network of branded, technology- and community-driven Web sites focused on the following categories: personal finance, search and directory, commerce and business services, and games. The company also develops Web-related software. The Go2Net Network's properties include: Go2Net Personal (http://www.go2net.com/), which provides users with a comprehensive Internet start page offering customizable news, discussion, and stock information, as well as direct access to Go2Net's own finance, search, free Web hosting, shopping and Java multiplayer game sites; Silicon Investor (http://www.siliconinvestor.com/), the Web's premier financial discussion site, which also offers proprietary articles, portfolio tracking tools, company research and news relating to business and finance; MetaCrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com/), a metasearch service that combines various existing search/index guides into one service; Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com/), a metasearch service and provider of proprietary search technologies; 100hot (http://www.100hot.com/), a leading directory of the Web's most popular sites; HyperMart (http://www.hypermart.net/) and Virtual Avenue (http://www.virtualave.net/), the Web's leading providers of free business hosting services; Authorize.Net (http://www.authorize.net/), the Internet's leading payment authorization service; Haggle Online (http://www.haggle.com/), a person-to-person auction service; WebMarket (http://www.webmarket.com/), a one-stop comparison shopping service; and PlaySite (http://www.playsite.com/), the Web's premier Java-based multi-player games site. The company's Go2Net Labs division develops innovative technologies to enhance the features and functionality of the Go2Net sites and for licensing to other Internet companies.