GoTo Jumps on Terra Lycos Agreement

GoTo.com (Nasdaq: GOTO) was up 1 29/32 at 18 1/32 early Friday after the company announced an alliance with Terra Lycos (Nasdaq: TRLY).

The three-year agreement could be worth "tens of millions of dollars," said GoTo, a Pasadena, California-based provider of pay-for-performance search, comparison shopping and auction services to Web sites.

GoTo said its service will be added to the search and directory pages of Lycos.com at HotBot, which are used by more than 32 million people each month.

GoTo president and chief executive officer Ted Meisel said the company expects to generate revenues "in excess of the cumulative payments we expect to make to Terra Lycos during the deal's term."

Terra Lycos, which was formed last month through the combination of Terra Networks and Lycos, Inc., operates in 40 countries and 19 languages. The company's sites reach 91 million unique visitors each month worldwide.

GoTo is in the process of changing its name to something designed to better reflect its status as a provider of pay-for-performance search services to Web sites and companies doing business over the Internet. The trademark infringement claim asserted by Go2 Systems was also a factor in the decision to seek a new name, the company said.

GoTo hired NameLab to work on coming up with a new name. NameLab has developed many other corporate names, such as Acura, Compaq and Webvan.

GoTo reaches about 28 million unique users through partnerships with companies including America Online, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and EarthLink/MindSpring.