Go.com

Last updated
Go.com
Go.com logo.png
Type of site
 Web portal
Available inEnglish
Owner Disney Interactive
(The Walt Disney Company)
Created by Disney Interactive Media Group
(The Walt Disney Company)
URL go.com
Commercialyes
LaunchedJanuary 9, 1998;26 years ago (1998-01-09)

Go.com (also known as The Go Network) is a portal for Disney content that was created after The Walt Disney Company acquired the search engine Infoseek. Go.com is operated by Disney Interactive's Disney Online. It began as a web portal launched by Jeff Gold. [1] Go.com includes content from ABC News, which is owned by Walt Disney Television and is hosted under a .go.com name. Along with Time Warner's Pathfinder.com, Go.com proved to be an expensive failure for its parent company, as web users largely preferred to use search engines to access content directly, rather than using directories. In 2013, the site was transitioned from a general-interest portal to a simple landing page.

Contents

History

Go.com's original logo used from 1998 to 1999 as Go Network. Go.com 1998 logo.png
Go.com's original logo used from 1998 to 1999 as Go Network.

On January 9, 1998, Disney registered Go.com. [2] Infoseek and Disney Interactive Media Group joint ventured in developing the Go Network, an internet portal. [3] Go.com was launched on January 15, 1999, as a portal with content from ABCNews.com, ESPN.com and Disney. [4]

With Disney's purchase of the remainder of Infoseek in July 1999, the Go Network, Infoseek, the Disney Catalog, Disney Online (Disney.com and DisneyStore.com), ABC News Internet Ventures, ESPN Internet Ventures, and Buena Vista Internet Group were merged into the Go.com company; the company was 72% Disney-owned, with the other outstanding ownership in a tracking stock. [5]

In October 1999, the Go Guides program, a user-edited directory like DMOZ, was launched. [6] [7]

In January 2000, Go.com was forced to abandon its original stoplight logo because of a complaint of similar-looking logos filed by GoTo.com. [8] [9] Concurrently, Go.com company officials announced it was shifting from a general appeal portal to featuring entertainment content. [7] A court later ruled that Go.com had to pay $21.5 million in damages to GoTo.com. [10]

However, in January 2001, Disney announced that it would be closing Go.com and its search engine, laying off approximately 400 employees and retiring the go.com tracking stock. [11] Also announced was the closing of Go.com's volunteer-edited directory. With the closing, some volunteers created, or migrated to, offshoot directories including JoeAnt, Goguides.org, and Skaffe.com.

In March 2001, Go.com dropped its internal search engine in favor of GoTo.com search results. [10]

Current status

Despite its announcement, Go.com never ceased operations. Instead, in March 2001, the site ended its search engine and switched to a search engine provided by goto.com, whose parent, Overture Services, Inc, was eventually purchased by Yahoo!. [10] [12]

Go.com terminated its email service on August 31, 2010.

In 2013, Disney retired the Go.com logo and branding, turning the domain into a Disney-branded landing page without a search engine. The properties of Disney Interactive then began the process of moving the connection of user accounts off from depending on the Go.com domain to a different type of system not dependent solely on one domain. Throughout 2014 and 2015, the ABC Owned Television Stations began to move to only using their on-air domains, mainly for social media considerations. For example, the website ABC 7 in Chicago had been hosted at abclocal.go.com/wls but is now instead hosted on abc7chicago.com.

In 2016, some of Disney's sites, including ABC's network and news divisions and Disney's cable networks continued to be hosted on the go.com domain, although a base address was used for branding and simplicity purposes; for example, the website for Freeform redirected to freeform.go.com. As of 2022, the Freeform website is hosted solely on the freeform.com domain name.

In August 2016, ESPN.com switched to solely using that domain instead of espn.go.com, tying into the improved Disney Enterprise Technology user account and registration process, rather than a rumored issue involving the resolution of "301" error notices from the former espn.com redirect causing lower search result rankings. [13] [14]

Related Research Articles

A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displaying information ; often, the user can configure which ones to display. Variants of portals include mashups and intranet dashboards for executives and managers. The extent to which content is displayed in a "uniform way" may depend on the intended user and the intended purpose, as well as the diversity of the content. Very often design emphasis is on a certain "metaphor" for configuring and customizing the presentation of the content and the chosen implementation framework or code libraries. In addition, the role of the user in an organization may determine which content can be added to the portal or deleted from the portal configuration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Broadcasting Company</span> American broadcast television network

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network that serves as the flagship property of the Disney Entertainment division of the Walt Disney Company. ABC is headquartered on Riverside Drive in Burbank, California, directly across the street from Walt Disney Studios and adjacent to the Team Disney – Roy E. Disney Animation Building. The network maintains secondary offices at 77 West 66th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, which houses its broadcast center and the headquarters of its news division, ABC News.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inktomi</span> Former software company based in California

Inktomi Corporation was an American Internet service provider (ISP) software developer based in Foster City, California. Customers included Microsoft, HotBot, Amazon.com, eBay, and Walmart.

Starwave was a Seattle, Washington-based software and website company, founded in 1993 by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and led by CEO Mike Slade. The company produced original CD-ROM titles, including Muppets Inside, and titles for Clint Eastwood, Sting, and Peter Gabriel. They were the original developers of Castle Infinity, the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game for children, but Starwave's most lasting mark was in the area of web content sites. They developed ESPN.com, ABCNEWS.com, Outside Online, and Mr. Showbiz.com among other sites, setting the standard for much of the commercial Internet explosion of the late 1990s. Starwave also developed the first site and publishing system for Jim Cramer's TheStreet.com.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disney anthology television series</span> Anthology television series

The Walt Disney Company has produced an anthology television series since 1954 under several titles and formats. The program's current title, The Wonderful World of Disney, was used from 1969 to 1979 and again from 1991 onward. The program moved among the Big Three television networks in its first four decades, but has aired on ABC since 1997 and Disney+ from 2020 to 2023, but is still advertised during or after the program.

Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. They can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. Google beta-tested a cost-per-action service, but discontinued it in October 2008 in favor of a DoubleClick offering. In Q1 2014, Google earned US$3.4 billion, or 22% of total revenue, through Google AdSense. In 2021, more than 38 million websites used AdSense. It is a participant in the AdChoices program, so AdSense ads typically include the triangle-shaped AdChoices icon. This program also operates on HTTP cookies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ABC Signature</span> Production studio arm of ABC

ABC Signature is an American television production studio and the flagship production arm of the American Broadcasting Company, which is a subsidiary of Disney Television Studios, a sub-division of the Disney Entertainment business segment and division of The Walt Disney Company.

Infoseek was an American internet search engine founded in 1994 by Steve Kirsch.

Disney General Entertainment Content (DGEC), formerly Capital Cities/ABC,ABC Group, Disney–ABC Television Group and the second incarnation of Walt Disney Television, is part of Disney Entertainment, a division of The Walt Disney Company that oversees its owned-and-operated television content, assets and sub-divisions.

ESPN3 is an online streaming service owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company and Hearst Communications, that provides live streams and replays of global sports events to sports fans in the United States.

disney.com Official website of The Walt Disney Company

disney.com is a website operated by Disney Digital Network, a division of The Walt Disney Company, that promotes various Disney properties such as films, television shows, and theme park resorts, and offers entertainment content intended for children and families. disney.com is the company's second effort at a web portal, the first being ended with the loss of go.com.

Disney Consumer Products, Inc. is the retailing and licensing subsidiary of the Disney Experiences segment of The Walt Disney Company. Previously, Consumer Products was a segment of Disney until 2016, then a unit of Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media (2016–2018).

American cable and satellite television network Freeform was originally launched as the CBN Satellite Service on April 29, 1977, and has gone through four different owners and six different name changes during its history. This article details the network's existence from its founding by the Christian Broadcasting Network to its current ownership by The Walt Disney Company, which renamed the network to Freeform on January 12, 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disney Interactive</span> Interactive subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company

Disney Interactive is an American video game and internet company that oversees various websites and interactive media owned by The Walt Disney Company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WebChat Broadcasting System</span>

WebChat Broadcasting System, or WBS for short, is a virtual community created during the 1990s. Supported by online advertising, it was one of few services at the time to offer free integrated community services including chat rooms, message boards, and free personal web pages. Extremely popular during the mid to late 1990s in the era prior to the Dot-com bust, WBS was at that time the largest and best-known social media website on the internet. In 1998, WBS was acquired by the search engine Infoseek, which was in turn acquired by Disney/ABC. The original WebChat Broadcasting System closed on 15 September 1999 after its chat rooms were integrated into Disney's existing Go Network chat rooms. A revival of WBS was launched in 2009 and is virtually identical to the original community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TV Everywhere</span> Authentication for streaming video

TV Everywhere refers to a type of American subscription business model wherein access to streaming video content from a television channel requires users to "authenticate" themselves as current subscribers to the channel, via an account provided by their participating pay television provider, in order to access the content.

WatchESPN was a branding of the Internet television website and mobile application operated by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company and Hearst Corporation.

Freeform is an American basic cable channel owned and operated by ABC Family Worldwide, a sub-division of the Disney Entertainment business segment and division of the Walt Disney Company. Freeform primarily broadcasts programming geared toward teenagers and young adults – with some skewing toward young women – in the 13-34 age range, a target demographic designated by the channel as "becomers". Its programming includes contemporary off-network syndicated reruns and original series, feature films, and made-for-TV original movies.

References

  1. ↑ Bahareth, Mohammad (April 18, 2012). Kings of the Internet. iUniverse. p. 210. ISBN   9781469798431 . Retrieved March 31, 2014.
  2. ↑ Polsson, Ken. "1998". Chronology of the Walt Disney Company. kpolsson.com. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  3. ↑ Tedesco, Richard (December 14, 1998). "Disney, Infoseek give green light". Broadcasting & Cable. Archived from the original on May 31, 2013. Retrieved 30 November 2012.
  4. ↑ "GO Network premieres". CNN Money. January 12, 1999. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  5. ↑ "Disney absorbs Infoseek". CNN Money. July 12, 1999. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  6. ↑ "The Search Engine Report: Go Guides Goes Live". searchenginewatch.com. October 4, 1999. Archived from the original on 3 January 2003. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  7. 1 2 Sullivan, Danny (Feb 3, 2000). "Go Going Elsewhere, Loses Logo". Search Engine Watch. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  8. ↑ Jacobus, Patricia (January 28, 2000). "Judge bars Disney from using Go.com logo". CNET News. Archived from the original on November 17, 2013. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  9. ↑ "Go Going Elsewhere, Loses Logo". Search Engine Watch. February 3, 2000. Archived from the original on August 3, 2004. Retrieved 2024-07-15.
  10. 1 2 3 Sullivan, Danny (March 14, 2001). "Go.com Becomes GoTo". Search Engine Watch. Archived from the original on 25 March 2013. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  11. ↑ "Disney to Discontinue Go.com Portal". Internet News. January 29, 2001. Archived from the original on 31 May 2008. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  12. ↑ Olsen, Stefanie. "Yahoo to buy Overture for $1.63 billion". CNET. Retrieved 2021-01-30.
  13. ↑ Buchholz, Andrew (4 August 2016). "ESPN drops ESPN.go.com, but not over a tweet from last week". Awful Announcing . Retrieved 5 August 2016.
  14. ↑ Benton, Joshua (4 August 2016). "ESPN.com has finally replaced espn.go.com, and a newish SEO rule means it won't lose Google juice". Nieman Journalism Lab . Retrieved 5 August 2016.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.