Netscape has thrown down the gauntlet to popular Internet portal Yahoo! after its bruising browser battle with Microsoft.
Ms Linda Lawrence, the executive charged with building up Netscape's own portal, the Netcentre, outside the US, said on Tuesday she was looking for local partners to gain geographical reach.
"The Internet was at first mainly a United States thing but now we have to be international to remain really part of the mainstream," she said.
The company, in the process of being acquired by AOL, is too aware of its cultural and linguistic shortcomings to try to set up local Netscentres.
In France, for instance, it has teamed up with France Telecom portal Voila! and search engine Nomade. But its real aim is to find media and commerce partners.
"People that have a strong brand outside the Net but no presence on the Net, we can help them stamp their brand on the Internet," Ms Lawrence said.
Netscape's competitive edge with companies such as Yahoo! lies in the technical knowledge of applications that it can deliver to its partners - Netscape can run a site or commercial platform or "e-mail back office" for its partner.
"Netscape has not created the Internet but has tremendously helped in popularising it," she said, adding that Yahoo! started out as a site referenced by Netscape.
Yahoo! chief executive, Mr Tim Koogle said in a keynote speech to the Milia multimedia industry fair in Cannes that e-commerce was forecast to reach $400 billion (€356 billion) in a few years and electronic advertising would also explode.
To capture part of this money, groups like Yahoo! are in a race for audience, or in industry-speak, "the battle for the eyeballs".
They can resell the audiences to advertisers and also leverage their e-mail lists to promote electronic commerce, taking a percentage of the transaction price. "A very interesting business model," Mr Koogle said.
He presented data showing Yahoo! leads both the business market and the household market. It is followed by Microsoft and Lycos, with AOL fourth and Netscape fifth.
