November 29, 2001

11:28 AM

Excite turns out the lights.For the last four years Excite's portal page has been my daily stop for news, stocks, showtimes, weather, etc. But they've been turning off services for weeks, and now the whole portal seems to be dead. Are free news portals soon to be quaint memory? [more inside]
posted by y6y6y6 (35 comments total)

The stocks were last updated on the 24th, and the personalized news is still from the 27th. ZDNet news feed's been dropped. Local news dropped.

I NEED my portal! I'd even be willing to pay for the right service. Problem is I can't find it. My Yahoo doesn't have half the stuff I want. My Netscape won't let Opera play. My MSN requires Passport. I can't find a replacement.

This seems like such a great product that I can't believe it will just go away. Are there other free or pay-to-play portals I should know about?

And why didn't Excite even suggest a pay option? We all knew it wouldn't be free forever. Someone has to pay the bills. But no one will pay if you don't ask. Are the free resource providers going to just silently turn themselves off, lock the doors and go home?
posted by y6y6y6 at 11:28 AM on November 29, 2001

Hmm, mine still works...for now. I'd give you mine if I could. I've never liked it.
posted by justgary at 11:34 AM on November 29, 2001

methinks they should've implemented textads.
posted by dcgartn at 11:40 AM on November 29, 2001

I'm locked in too, I've kept the excite email and portal for years and years, and it's kind of disheartening. Their email app has been absolute crap for months, but when I looked at setting up a mail.yahoo account, I saw the big huge scary ads and ran away. My excite email has basically become a spam box, but I'm afraid that one day they'll just turn it off, or not pay bills and have it turned off for them. Other than the big boys, msn, yahoo, etc., any recommendations?
posted by panopticon at 11:43 AM on November 29, 2001

CEOExpress free or paid service.
posted by Voyageman at 11:46 AM on November 29, 2001

for news, it may make sense to look at applications like amphetadesk and headlineviewer (or other apps listed here. newsisfree.com is a great source of news feeds, as well as the growing list at syndic8.com.
posted by jimw at 11:50 AM on November 29, 2001

my.yahoo.com has the same stuff, and with a billion in the bank, they probably aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
posted by kfury at 11:52 AM on November 29, 2001

i blame Greenspan.

nice job cooling-off the economy, asswipe.
posted by tsarfan at 11:54 AM on November 29, 2001

There's the Lycos juggernaut (ha!), but they've not been known for their polite netiquette -- they sold email addresses to marketers when they shut down the hotbot email services, locking users into forwarded junkmail they were powerless to stop.

WSJ and FT.com are helpful, but probably don't give you everything you want -- WSJ is subscription and serves up tons of news and stock quotes, but no email; FT.com is free and includes email, but its local news is British.
posted by me3dia at 11:54 AM on November 29, 2001

Uh, I don't think Greenspan did Excite in -- blame @home. That albatross has been dragging Excite down slowly ever since they bought it.
posted by me3dia at 11:56 AM on November 29, 2001

and struggling upstart msn.com.
posted by Voyageman at 11:57 AM on November 29, 2001

commondreams.org is a great alternative news portal with dozens of links and lots of breaking news. I check it daily, along with my.yahoo for the mainstream stuff.
posted by mapalm at 11:59 AM on November 29, 2001

i agree with kfury. my.yahoo.com is great. i dont know why anyone would use any other portal. and you can make it the colors of peas and carrots, yummy!!!
posted by adampsyche at 12:16 PM on November 29, 2001

i blame Greenspan.

More like deals such as this.

780 million for an online greeting card site? It still amazes me.

(there was also a large amount of money wasted on a gaming site that never worked out, but the name escapes me.)
posted by justgary at 12:26 PM on November 29, 2001

"My MSN requires Passport"....so what? I think it's safe to say that MSN isn't going to run out money. Yes, their Hotmail is one big spam magnet, but I've always found the DELETE key very useful. Not to mention blocks and filters.
Or is this an anti-Microsoft, anti-mainstream thing?

Hey what about iwon.com? It has everything and you can win money too! Oh wait, they're giving away money to use their portal...better stick with MSN.
posted by doan at 12:35 PM on November 29, 2001

I worked for Excite (engineer on chat on voice chat services) in 1999 and 2000, and I was appalled how poorly the company was run; of course, management had seen the writing on the wall by then, and the company was desperately trying to find a strategy that might actually work. Obviously, it didn't.
posted by tippiedog at 12:40 PM on November 29, 2001

As for e-mail, I think a hosting account with a web host provider with webmail is the way to go. That way I get no 3rd party tag lines, so extra ads, and POP3 access. For around 5 bux a month for a small account, they can work great.

For portal stuff, I've always liked Yahoo! best.
posted by benjh at 12:41 PM on November 29, 2001

Excite's portal won't be dead, but it will be gutted in short order. Dogpile's taking over the search function and iWon will be handling most of the portal components. Bleah.

I'm really going to miss Excite's TV listings when they disappear. I've been unable to find a service anywhere near as good.
posted by Aaaugh! at 1:11 PM on November 29, 2001

blame @home. That albatross has been dragging Excite down slowly ever since they bought it.

um, i think it's the other way around. the $6 billion purchase of Excite was the beginning of the end for @home (which is essentially now AT&T Broadband).

not to rip on excite, since i know a lot of people who used to work there, but it was a fairly worthless portal and an absolutely worthless company. you can get almost everything there from other sites. from what i could see first-hand, all they were doing was repackaging wire feeds and aping Yahoo new features whenever possible (Yahoo has an instant messenger? we need one of those!)

the only thing it ever had going for it was that it was #2 for a little while, and there were a few personalization innovations.

@home, however, had a fairly useful broadband infrastructure, and about 4 million paying customers at $45 bucks a month. unfortunately, @home just didn't understand that the pipes, not the content, were going to be the big moneymakers (at least for the near future). i think they only got a minimal amount (1% sounds right for some reason) of the isp fees. cable companies got the rest.

as for excite ... so what? there are still a million places to get free email, free stock quotes, free news and free TV listings.

btw, it seems that the excite portal will continue, but will be managed by infospace. as for @home's subscribers, they may be out of luck.
posted by mrgrimm at 1:28 PM on November 29, 2001

@Home, with more than 41 million cable Internet subscribers worldwide

41 million people will be losing internet access, including me.
posted by trioperative at 1:56 PM on November 29, 2001

On second look, I believe it's a misprint, closer to 4 or 3.7 million.

But still, that's a lot.
posted by trioperative at 2:02 PM on November 29, 2001

um, i think it's the other way around.

Is that how it worked? Well, no matter. They're both doomed now.
posted by me3dia at 2:21 PM on November 29, 2001

On second look, I believe it's a misprint, closer to 4 or 3.7 million

I'm not sure about the whole number of that. I had @Home, but the subscriber base is being taken over by my cable company, Adelphia, without a hiccup. I wonder if any other cable companies are doing that?
posted by owillis at 3:18 PM on November 29, 2001

"My Yahoo doesn't have half the stuff I want."

What on earth do you want? My Yahoo has everything from car maintenance tracking to shareable personal calendars to invites to bill payments to... good grief, as soon as they think of something they don't have, they go and add it. And it's all integrated rather well. I love My Yahoo.

BTW, for TV listings Zap2it.com is decent.
posted by Tubes at 3:20 PM on November 29, 2001

Well, I live in a smaller town, so I don't know what's going on.
posted by trioperative at 3:21 PM on November 29, 2001

I too have had my excite page for 4 years. Recently, they dropped the "newstracker" feature, which I loved! I think Excite was the first to offer a personal portal page. It is my homepage on my home computer! I will miss it. Thanks for all the alternatives mentioned in posts above. I will start looking for something comperable.
posted by culberjo at 4:48 PM on November 29, 2001

I am due to get clipped. This is so ridiculous. Their solution is to refer you to Netzero? "Uh, sorry you can't have your steak, sir...you payed for it, you are at the restaraunt....but next door, we know someone who is serving Alpo, and it won't work with your Mac, but it isn't our problem..."

I also hate how they are asking the judge to let them pull the plug, yet I get shit like this in my inbox:

"This month, Excite@Home petitioned the Bankruptcy Court for permission
to terminate agreements with its cable affiliates - including Comcast,
Cox and AT&T - on November 30, 2001. If the Court grants Excite@Home's
request, there could be a temporary disruption in the services Excite
provides
to the more than four million customers served by its North American
affiliates.


Please be assured that we value your business and are doing everything
possible to ensure that there will be no interruption of your Comcast
@Home
service. "

"Uh, we are requesting that you get fucked, but we value your business...

You know, maybe I am being unfair. I can accept that I am, perhaps, "over reacting". But I have yet to hear "their" side of the story. My wife and I are online all the time, we don't watch TV for news; we are close to shutting off our phone (who needs it with great cell rates?) We both use it for school and work, and for them to shove us in the direction of NetZero is plain ludicrous.

The only reason I know this is because a buddy of mine showed it to me. I haven't checked my @home crap mail in months, I use my Web hosts' mail...I also move somewhat often and this is a better "permanent" solution".
posted by adampsyche at 5:06 PM on November 29, 2001

Comparatively speaking, Excite's implosion isn't really all that bad as far as corporate death spirals go.

So what did Excite's TV listings do that TV Guide doesn't?
posted by BentPenguin at 5:36 PM on November 29, 2001

Excite's portal won't be dead, but it will be gutted in short order.

does this count for anything?
posted by kliuless at 7:08 PM on November 29, 2001

So what did Excite's TV listings do that TV Guide doesn't?

The best feature of Excite's TV listings is their favorites section. You plug in your favorite shows/movies, and they let you know when and where they'll be aired in the upcoming week. As far as I know, none of the other TV listing sites offer this service. If anyone knows of sites that do, I'd love to hear about it.
posted by Aaaugh! at 8:06 PM on November 29, 2001

i've really liked My Yahoo in the past. however, they've added ads to the right hand side recently and it's getting to be too much. i'd pay for a plain-jane version with the same features/sources and even a text ad or too.
posted by Sean Meade at 8:22 AM on November 30, 2001

i've really liked My Yahoo in the past. however, they've added ads to the right hand side recently and it's getting to be too much.

They did this just this week, and it is sure pissing me off. I seriously considered finding another portal. I hope they are gone by the time the holidays are over.
posted by adampsyche at 9:17 AM on November 30, 2001

This morning's ZDNet story: Analysts: Excite@Home may survive.
posted by Carol Anne at 10:59 AM on November 30, 2001

Do you mean the little ad at the very top right? I've become so blind to ads that I never even noticed it was there until you pointed it out. I assumed it was always there.
posted by fncll at 11:03 AM on November 30, 2001

Um, I think it's Excite@Home that's in financial turmoil. My Excite.com home page is up and running just fine...
posted by dgeiser13 at 1:10 PM on November 30, 2001