Go.com (also known as The Go Network) is a portal for Disney content that was created after

The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on Octobe ...

acquired the search engine

Infoseek Infoseek (also known as the "big yellow") was an American internet search engine founded in 1994 by Steve Kirsch. Infoseek was originally operated by the Infoseek Corporation, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Infoseek was bought by The Wa ...

. Go.com is operated by

Disney Parks, Experiences and Products Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, Inc., formerly Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Worldwide, Inc. and informally known as Disney Parks, is one of The Walt Disney Company's five major business segments and a subsidiary. It was founded on Apri ...

, one of four divisions of the company. It began as a

web portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayi ...

launched by Jeff Gold. Go.com includes content from

ABC News ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast '' ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include morning news-talk show '' Good Morning America'', '' ...

, which is owned by

Walt Disney Television Disney General Entertainment Content, doing business as Walt Disney Television, is an American entertainment company that oversees television content and assets owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company. Forming the company's General Enter ...

and is hosted under a .go.com name. Along with

Time Warner Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States. It was originally established in 1972 by ...

's Pathfinder.com, Go.com proved to be an expensive failure for its parent company, as web users largely preferred to use

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

s to access content directly, rather than using directories. In 2013, the site was transitioned from a general-interest portal to a simple landing page.

History

On January 9, 1998, Disney registered Go.com. Infoseek and Disney Interactive Media Group joint ventured in developing the Go Network, an internet portal. Go.com was launched on January 15, 1999, as a portal with content from ABCNews.com, ESPN.com and Disney. With Disney's purchase of the remainder of Infoseek in July 1999, the Go Network, Infoseek, the Disney Catalog, Disney Online (Disney.com and DisneyStore.com), ABC News Internet Ventures, ESPN Internet Ventures, and Buena Vista Internet Group were merged into the Go.com company; the company was 72% Disney-owned, with the other outstanding ownership in a

tracking stock Tracking stock, also known as letter stock and targeted stock, is a specialized equity offering issued by a company that is based on the operations of a defined business within the larger organization (such as, for instance, a wholly owned subsi ...

. In October 1999, the Go Guides program, a user-edited directory like

DMOZ DMOZ (from ''directory.mozilla.org'', an earlier domain name, stylized in lowercase in its logo) was a multilingual open-content directory of World Wide Web links. The site and community who maintained it were also known as the Open Directory ...

, was launched. In January 2000, Go.com was forced to abandon its original

stoplight Traffic lights, traffic signals, or stoplights – known also as robots in South Africa are signalling devices positioned at road intersections, pedestrian crossings, and other locations in order to control flows of traffic. Traffic light ...

logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wo ...

because of a complaint of similar-looking logos filed by GoTo.com. Concurrently, Go.com company officials announced it was shifting from a general appeal portal to featuring entertainment content. A court later ruled that Go.com had to pay $21.5 million in damages to GoTo.com. However, in January 2001, Disney announced that it would be closing Go.com and its search engine, laying off approximately 400 employees and retiring the go.com

. Also announced was the closing of Go.com's volunteer-edited directory. With the closing, some volunteers created, or migrated to, offshoot directories including JoeAnt, Goguides.org, and Skaffe.com. In March 2001, Go.com dropped its internal search engine in favor of GoTo.com search results.

Current status

Despite its announcement, Go.com never ceased operations. Instead, in March 2001, the site ended its search engine and switched to a search engine provided by goto.com, whose parent, Overture Services, Inc, was eventually purchased by

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Mana ...

. In August 2010, Go.com terminated its email service on August 31, 2010. In 2013, Disney retired the Go.com logo and branding, turning the domain into a Disney-branded landing page without a search engine. The properties of Disney Interactive then began the process of moving the connection of user accounts off from depending on the Go.com domain to a different type of system not dependent solely on one domain. Throughout 2014 and 2015, the

ABC Owned Television Stations ABC Owned Television Stations is a division of Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution operated by Disney Networks Group that oversees the owned-and-operated stations of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), a division of The Walt Disney ...

began to move to only using their on-air domains, mainly for

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social me ...

considerations. For example, the website ABC 7 in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

had been hosted at abclocal.go.com/wls but is now instead hosted o
abc7chicago.com
In 2016, some of Disney's sites, including ABC's network and news divisions and Disney's cable networks continued to be hosted on the go.com domain, although a base address was used for branding and simplicity purposes; for example, the website for Freeform redirected t
freeform.go.com
As of 2022, the Freeform website is hosted solely on th
freeform.com
domain name. In August 2016,

ESPN.com ESPN.com is the official website of ESPN. It is owned by ESPN Internet Ventures, a division of ESPN Inc. History Since launching in April 1995 as ESPNET.SportsZone.com (ESPNET SportsZone), the website has developed numerous sections including: ...

switched to solely using that domain instead o
espn.go.com
tying into the improved Disney Enterprise Technology user account/registration process rather than a rumored issue involving the resolution of " 301" error notices from the former espn.com redirect causing issues with lower search result rankings.

Notes

# January 28, 2000
Judge bars Disney from using Go.com logo
# February 3, 2000
Go Going Elsewhere, Loses Logo
# January 29, 2001
Disney to Discontinue Go.com Portal
# March 15, 2001
Go.com Becomes GoTo
!--archive date: 2003-04-10-->

References

External links

Go.com
{{Authority control Web portals Internet properties established in 1998 Internet properties disestablished in 2013 Disney Interactive Dot-com bubble American companies established in 1998 American companies disestablished in 2013