Taiwanese dotcom companies attracted takeover attention for the second time in the last few months yesterday after Terra Lycos officials were quoted as saying they planned to go shopping on "Silicon Island."
Officials from LycosAsia, a US$50 million joint venture between SingTel and Terra Lycos, confirmed the purchase of greater China Web portal Myrice.com yesterday in the first stop on a buying spree rumored to go on for the next six months and target Taiwan and India in particular. A Hong Kong news report said that LycosAsia paid US$12.75 million in cash for the site.
According to Interactive Asia Measurements (Iamasia.com), an Internet research group, Myrice.com is the 11th largest greater China portal in the region, with 1.3 million regular visitors.
Officials at LycosAsia-Taiwan refused to comment on the Hong Kong report, but Mary Ong, CEO of Lycos Asia, said the company "will continue to scan our environment for opportunities like this as we work toward our mission to be the most visited online destination in the world."
Taiwan, a leader in developing Chinese-language Web sites, saw its first major dotcom acquisition last November, when Internet powerhouse Yahoo announced the purchase of the nation's top Web portal, Kimo.com (
Kevin Rahm, head of local Internet investment company VenueTBA.com, speculated LycosAsia might go for popular portal sites Yam.com (
Yam and PC Home are the only two sites ranked in the Taiwan top-10 by Iamasia that are still independently owned. The rest of the crowd are either owned by the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo, or by a local Internet service provider, such as Chunghwa Telecom's (中華電信) HiNet.com. None of these sites are for sale, and most of the sites outside the Iamasia top 10 have not built viable brand names in Taiwan.
Iamasia ranks PC Home second in Taiwan behind Kimo.com with 3.1 million regular visitors, and Yam ranks sixth with 1.68 million visitors. The LycosAsia branch aimed at the local market, LycosAsia.com.tw, by contrast, didn't even crack the top 20 in the Iamasia rankings -- hence the need to purchase a local Web portal.
Trouble in cyberspace should also help lead to a deal between these companies. The bursting of the dotcom bubble has put both companies in some financial straits.
PC Home's parent company, the PC Home Publishing Group, racked up 12-month losses of nearly NT$300 million (US$9.3 million) on an ill-fated Internet newspaper, the Tomorrow Times (
Yam has had troubles of its own. Despite CEO Chen Jen-ran's (
Still, both companies retain top investors such as Microsoft and Bertelsmann AG and, according to Bega Ng, director of analysis at iamasia.com, "YAM and PC Home continue to attract large numbers of Internet users."
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