The highly anticipated Disney/Infoseek portal offering
is set to launch sometime in November, according to Infoseek.
Plans for the portal were first announced June 18, when The Walt Disney Co.
agreed
to purchase a 43% stake in Infoseek Corp. in exchange
for Disney’s ownership position in Starwave and $70 million in cash.
According to an Infoseek spokeswoman, the portal will debut as an “umbrella
brand,” incorporating
Infoseek, Starwave and Disney properties, including
ESPN.com, ABCNEWS.com, Mr. Showbiz, Wall of Sound, and others.
As to the future of Infoseek, the spokeswoman said, “It
will not go away as a site or a brand, but it will come under the portal
brand and be part of a network.”
Infoseek also said it expects to launch a new desktop software tool dubbed
“Express,” on September 22. It will be available on Infoseek.com and
over one hundred other partner sites for download.
Reportedly the Java-based tool is designed to enable users to download
multiple Web page
search results at one time. The pages are kept within the
computer hard drive, so that users can browse
through the results via the PC rather than through the search engine server.