Search Engine Profits And Losses

The charts below show key financial data from statements filed by each of the major search engines. AltaVista and HotBot are not shown, because they are part of larger organizations, and so their specific costs cannot be identified. Likewise, there is no way to break out spending on Excite vs. WebCrawler from the Excite filings.

Fiscal Year Differences

Most of the search engines use a fiscal year that matches the calendar year, running from January 1 to December 31. Lycos uses a fiscal year which runs from August 1 to July 31. Thus, Lycos quarters do not match those of the other search engines. In order to show comparisons, Lycos quarterly figures are matched to those of the other search engines, as shown:

The chart below shows the latest profits or losses of each search engine. Lycos figures are as of Jan. 31, 1998. All others are as of March 31, 1998.

The chart below shows profits or losses of each search engine, over time.

Excite's large drop in Q2 96 is mostly related to $10 million payment to Netscape for positioning of Excite and Magellan on the Net Search page.

Yahoo's large drop in Q2 97 is due to a $21 million payment it made to Visa to end a joint marketing partnership. Infoseek's drop in the same period is due to a $7 million restructuring charge.

The chart below shows each search engine's accumulated deficit, over time:

Below is shown how much each search engine has earned, over time:

More Information

Information on these charts comes from the statements each company is required to file with the U.S. Securities And Exchange Commission. The information can be found online from many sources. I personally find the Excite Business & Investing Channel provides a well-organized starting place for those seeking SEC filings, quotes, financial data and more. The links below will take you to an appropriate page for each search engine, within that channel:

Excite Data
http://quicken.excite.com/investments/quotes/?symbol=XCIT

Infoseek Data
http://quicken.excite.com/investments/quotes/?symbol=SEEK

Lycos Data
http://quicken.excite.com/investments/quotes/?symbol=LCOS