Netscape said Wednesday it has acquired NewHoo, the Web directory that's been trying to beat Yahoo's staff of pros with an army of volunteers.
NewHoo was launched this summer. It claims to have signed up more than 4,700 people as "editors," who have already compiled more than 100,000 sites in its directory. Netscape said the service will be renamed "Netscape Open Directory" and will be integrated with existing Netscape Netcenter services.
The service will also be available through mozilla.org, the Netscape site that backs the open-source movement on the Web. Netscape's commitment to open source was a key factor in the community-based directory's decision to make the corporate leap, NewHoo said.
"NewHoo's community-editing approach fits well with [Netscape's] pioneering efforts to support the free software movement through Mozilla.org," NewHoo CEO and co-founder Rich Skrenta wrote in an email to its editors Tuesday night.
Despite its standing as the Web's first large navigational service and its most popular destination, Yahoo has been criticized for being slow to list new sites -- a point that Netscape and NewHoo hope to capitalize on.
"NewHoo has been struggling against the titans of the search engine space, but, thanks to the editors, has achieved great success despite very modest resources," Skrenta said in the letter.
Skrenta said that the directory will stay true to its roots in the open-source software movement, and that Netscape's Mozilla open-source browser project offered a handy match for the directory.
"In the spirit of open development, and fitting with the Mozilla ideals, we are creating a free-use license to allow individuals and organizations to take advantage of and use copies of the directory that they can crawl, archive, and re-use on their machines," Skrenta said. "The ability to do this was one of the key reasons for us to go with Netscape."
"Netscape Open Directory ... gives Netscape a distinct competitive advantage because, unlike other directory search services, it can grow with the Web -- resulting in fresher content and fewer dead links," Netscape said in its press release Wednesday morning.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
