Globo.com‘s portal has gone live without the planned involvement of Microsoft, though the two companies are still negotiating with for regional Internet projects.
The site hit traffic overload repeatedly over the first two days due to heavy demand. In a few hours there were 148,000 page views with peaks of 7.5 thousand concurrent accesses, with an average session time of 12 minutes. Though many users could not access the site, Globo’s marketing director, Paulo Mozart, denies reports that the site crashed. Instead, he calls the technical difficulties an underestimate of the site’s appeal, to which Globo responded by addition 22 servers to the 54 that the portal used initially.
Globo.com will tap content production from all the Globo
Organizations companies — including radio and TV stations and newspapers scattered
throughout the country. This includes access to the main news show broadcast by TV
Globo, which reaches up to 80 percent of the country’s 180 million inhabitants.
Although it was being awaited for nine months, the Globo.com release was a
surprise and this is because Microsoft and Globo Organizations were
discussing the possibility of merging the Globo portal to MSN Brasil.
Osvaldo Barbosa de Oliveira, Internet Business Development Director at
Microsoft Brasil, said the Globo.com release did not signal the end of
negotiations with Globo Organizations and that the merger could
still become a reality.
In August of last year, Microsoft took an 11 percent stake in Globocabo for US$ 126 million
and, according to Barbosa de Oliveira of Microsoft Brasil, this was the
first step to the development of important projects with Globo
Organizations. One such projects intends to leverage broadband Internet access
development: Microsoft is very interested in the customers of broadband service of
Globocabo, Vmrtua.
Globo.com is one of the content providers of Vmrtua, a high speed bi-directional
Internet access service that uses the same cable network as paid TV NET and
cable modems. Vmrtua is another initiative of Globocabo, representing its play to a market of 4.5 million potential subscribers.
The portal’s goal is to attract one million users in its first year online in a market of 6.79 million
users, if population estimates made by Computer Industry
Almanac are correct. However, the number of Brazil’s Netizens really started to spike in early January when free Internet access providers started operating in the country.
The company is also entering the e-commerce
business through such operations as the audio CD online store, Som Livre, and an online department
store, Americanas.com.
Soon the portal will also offer free access. Mozart says the free dial-up access offer is one of the
company’s most clear goals, and will become a reality in the near future.
He added that Globo has plans for an IPO before the end
of the year, probably opening its capital in the Brazilian market and also
in the American market, through ADR (American Depositary Receipts).
