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NEWS
Excite@Home has officially confirmed that it will acquire Bluemountain.com for approximately $780 million in cash and stock.

In addition, Excite@Home has agreed to make a payment of up to $270 million in stock if Bluemountain can reach certain performance goals.

JOEL'S OPINION
It looks like the rumors that we reported last week were true. According to the release, Excite@Home will pay approximately $350 million in cash with the rest in stock. That's a lot of cash for a company that gives away its services for free.

Excite@Home is hoping to be able to leverage the greeting card in such a way that it can turn each greeting card into an e-commerce opportunity. In addition, it's hoping to lure some of Bluemountain's 9 million monthly visitors over to its broadband service.

I think that this statement alone is going to cause a drop in visitors almost immediately. There are tons of sites out there offering free greeting cards via e-mail. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of starting to offer that at UGeek soon. Anyway, my point is that if the site becomes too commercialized, the visitors will drop.

Excite@Home is hoping to gain a lot from this acquisition. I just hope that its hopes pan out.

I wonder when Yahoo! and Altavista will get into the online greeting card business? Are they already? If so, I've never seen them being offered because their homepages are too crowded now.

What do you think of this sale? Write to me at newsresponses@ugeek.com.

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