Company Aims to Change the Way People Find Information Online
SANTA CLARA, CALIF. -- February 13, 1995 -- Infoseek (tm) Corporation today announced a new Internet-based information retrieval service, Infoseek Search. The new service gives users with access to the World Wide Web an easy way to search for and retrieve articles from more than 100 computer publications, 10,000 Internet newsgroups and 200,000 World Wide Web pages. Infoseek's database contains more than two million articles and currently is the largest single collection of searchable information about the Internet and computer-related topics. The company expects to expand its offerings soon with a wide variety of additional sources.
The company also announced that it has reached agreements with well-known information publishers to provide content for Infoseek Search. These include Business Wire, CW Publishing Inc., Information Access Co., InfoWorld Publishing Co., Newsbytes News Network, PR Newswire and The Reference Press.
According to Infoseek's President Steven T. Kirsch, "Today, information is expensive and hard to find and the time has come for the economics of the industry to change. Traditional online information search services have experienced slow growth because the price and complexity of their systems make them attractive only to a small number of professional searchers. Infoseek aims to help revolutionize the industry by offering an Internet-based search service that's inexpensive, fast and easy to use."
Infoseek's full-text search service is compatible with a wide variety of World Wide Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and NCSA Mosaic. This allows users of PC-, UNIX- and Macintosh-based computers to use a single point-and-click interface to search information collections and retrieve documents.
Kirsch said that Infoseek Search is set apart from competitors because of its low price, ease of use and Internet availability. It is also the only tool available for searching the last four weeks of Usenet News (Netnews) articles. The company's natural-language search system allows subscribers to ask questions in plain English rather than requiring special commands and yields extremely precise results.
Last year, Infoseek conducted a successful free trial of the service; commercial-quality service has been available since late last year and has already attracted the interest of thousands of Internet users. Dr. Harry J. Saal, president and CEO of Smart Valley Inc., said, "I've used Infoseek to search the World Wide Web and Netnews groups, and have found it to be a unique and useful tool. It consistently finds not only the documents I am looking for, but other useful and relevant items that I didn't know existed. I look forward to using the service in the future as Infoseek adds new collections, enabling me to search online for other topics."
Infoseek Collections and Information Providers:
Infoseek Corporation is a privately-held company in Santa Clara, CA. It was started in 1994 by Steve Kirsch, the founder and former president of Frame Technology as well as the founder and former president of Mouse Systems. Infoseek Search is a service on the Internet's World-Wide Web that enables users to find and retrieve relevant information quickly, easily and at a low cost.
Additional information on Infoseek is available by accessing the URL http://info.infoseek.com. Those interested can also send e-mail to info@infoseek.com or telephone (408) 567-2700.
Infoseek is a trademark of Infoseek Corporation. Other trademarks are the property of their respective companies.