AOL THREATENS TO GO PORTAL WITH ICQ.

It is widely rumored that America Online will roll out a new "desktop portal" based on the next generation of its ICQ messaging technology. AOL bought ICQ when it acquired Israeli startup Mirabilis Ltd for $287m back in July (CI No 3,427). ICQ is a key asset for AOL: the company claims there are 21 million users of the chat software, half as many again as the 14 million registered subscribers to AOL itself. In addition, ICQ has the elusive property of "stickiness", a quality recognized as essential to portal success. Users tend to stay with ICQ for 69 minutes per day, which is far more time than they spend on conventional portals. The threat to the established portals comes from the web search engine built into ICQ99's taskbar - a desktop option comparable to the controversial Sherlock web search feature built into Apple's Mac OS 8.5. The Industry Standard reports that ICQ's default search engine will be powered by Inktomi, with a Most Visited option built on Direct Hit, which ranks sites by popularity. A third option will let users choose from 16 search providers, including up-and-comers WebCrawler and NetFind as well as the usual suspects, AltaVista, Lycos and Excite. The omission of Yahoo from the list has excited speculation that ICQ99 is out to get the hi ghly successful web directory, but AOL executives say all the portals were offered the same deal and that it was Yahoo's own choice to be left out.