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Netscape revamps Web site
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June 1, 1998: 2:05 p.m. ET
Company's upcoming Netcenter redesign signals shift in business focus
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - With an eye toward leading the growing Internet portal business, Netscape Communications Corp. announced Monday it will revamp its Netcenter Web site.
The company also said it will merge the browser division into its Web-site division.
Internet portals are designed to be a user's point of entry to the Web by offering aggregated content, searching, e-mail and other services.
Netscape is tweaking Netcenter to give users better access to Netcenter's content channels.
The revamped site, which Netscape had dubbed Netcenter 2.0, will launch at the end of June.
The redesigned Netcenter will include a service called "My Netscape," which will let users tailor their Netcenter start page to display content and services of their choosing.
Netcenter also will include what Netscape calls Smart Browsing features. One such feature, Internet Keywords, will let users go directly to a Web site by typing in keywords, eliminating the need to know the exact name of the site or to search for the site first.
Shares of Netscape (NSCP) fell 3/16 to 24-5/16 in midday trading.
Too late for a change?
Netscape, which has steadily been losing its share of the Web browser market to Microsoft Corp., has been shifting its focus to the portal market in hopes of boosting its slumping profits.
But Andrea Williams, an analyst at Volpe Brown Whelan, said Netscape waited too long to take advantage of its strong brand recognition.
"They missed a golden opportunity to transform its Web presence into something far more valuable to consumers," she said. "They could have been Yahoo!. They should have been Yahoo!."
Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) is the leader in the Internet portal market.
Brian Goodstadt, an analyst at S&P Equity Group, noted that while Netscape trails companies such as Yahoo! and Excite, it is still ahead of Microsoft, which plans to introduce its own portal site by the end of the year.
"They're still ahead of the game with respect to certain companies," Goodstadt said. "And they certainly have the brand name out there."
Strange bedfellows
Netscape in May signed a two-year deal with Excite Inc. to provide content and search capabilities for Netcenter. The move raised more than a few eyebrows, in part because Excite (XCIT) is a competitor in the Web portal market.
"It's an odd arrangement of competition and cooperation," Williams said. "Because [the joint venture] is Netscape branded, they're hoping to build the Netscape brand rather than the Excite brand."
While it's not too late for Netscape to make a push in the portal arena, analysts pointed out that its success will depend on the continued success of its Navigator browser.
Netscape, which once dominated the browser market, has seen its share fall to about 60 percent in the face of increased competition from Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
"Netscape will have to spend more and do more to catch up" to other portal companies, Williams said. "But they still have 60 percent of the browser market share."
"A lot of their hits per day comes from the browser," Goodstadt said. "The browser business is important because the browser works as an introduction to Netcenter." 
-- by staff writer John Frederick Moore
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