Dot Com News from Week of January 15, 2001

• 1/19/01 - Drugstore.com announced steps to reduce projected 2001 operating expenses by more than $20 million. This reduction includes the elimination of approximately 125 jobs through layoffs and expected attrition as well as reductions in planned marketing expenses.

• 1/19/01 - Internet e-business company VerticalNet, Inc. plans to cut about 150 employees in an effort to reduce costs to help it reach profitability. The 150 workers represent about 8.3 percent of its regular full-time workforce.

• 1/18/01 - Troubled NBC Internet said it was cutting about 150 positions in a move to reduce costs amid an increasingly soft online-advertising market.

• 1/18/01 - AOL Time Warner is planning to close down Web entertainment hub Entertaindom on Feb. 1, making it the latest in a long line of failed Time Warner online ventures.

• 1/18/01 - Software maker Vignette said it plans to shut some offices and trim its work force by approximately 15 percent to reduce expenses as it looks toward weaker earnings.

• 1/18/01 - ETour.com, a closely held online firm that serves up Web sites chosen to fit individual's interests, said it will lay off 25% of its work force to cut costs. eTour will cut 37 positions from its staff of 148.

• 1/18/01 - Troubled Web portal AltaVista said it laid off 200 employees, or about 25 percent of its staff, in the company's latest attempt to cut costs and reach profitability.

• 1/17/01 - Eyecity.com announced the sale of substantially all its business-to-consumer (B2C) Web sites. The Web sites include Peepers.com, Eyeglassplace.com and Binoculars.com, which generated substantially all of the Company's sales in 1999 and 2000. As a result of this transaction, the Company eliminated the $810,000 balance of the indebtedness it had incurred for the acquisition of these Web sites in 1999.

• 1/17/01 - Garden.com previously a leading provider of online gardening content, announced that it has completed the sale of its content and brand assets, transferring ownership of these assets to industry-leading Walmart.com and the Burpee Holding Company. Burpee has purchased the company's url (www.garden.com). This release comes approximately two months after Garden.com's announcement that it was unable to raise additional funding to continue operations and it would conduct a phased shut-down and company asset sale.

• 1/17/01 - LanguageWare.net, the parent of Wholetree.com, the multilingual business transactions company, has announced plans to wind down its operations, laying off 17 of its 23 staff in the process.

• 1/17/01 - Stockholders of failed pet supplier Pets.com today voted to liquidate and dissolve the company, more than two months after the site ran out of money and shut down. Last month pet supply retailer PetSmart bought the pets.com domain.

• 1/17/01 - CNN announced a broad restructuring that included the appointment of three new senior executives, several organizational changes and the layoff of at least 400 employees. The job cuts, amount to about 10 percent of the company's work force. The company's interactive division - which includes CNN.com and its financial news network CNNfn.com - will be hardest hit by the cuts, assuming more than one-third of the layoffs.

• 1/17/01 - Trader.com, an online marketplace where consumers and businesses advertise items for sale, will lay off 275 people as part of a restructuring that the company hopes will generate an additional $17 million in annual earnings beginning this year.

• 1/17/01 - Troubled Internet retailer LetsBuyIt.com announced that it had failed to pull itself out of financial difficulties and was filing for bankruptcy.

• 1/17/01 - Online Jeweler Denmans.com ceased operations, closed its Web site and laid off all employees, due to its inability to obtain additional funding.

• 1/17/01 - Jupiter Media Metrix Inc., a company that measures Web traffic, said it expects a fourth-quarter loss of 22 cents to 23 cents a share and will reduce its staff by 80 employees, or 8%, in order to cut costs.

• 1/16/01 - LeadingSide, Inc., a provider of e-business solutions, announced a reorganization that will reduce its workforce by approximately 50 percent, or 60 employees, in order to dramatically lower expenses and streamline operations.

• 1/16/01 - NorthPoint Communications, a DSL service provider, has filed a petition for Chapter 11 protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco.

• 1/16/01 - Drkoop.com said it will close its Austin, Texas, headquarters and lay off 45 employees. The company said it plans to begin exploring new business opportunities not limited to the Internet, including partnering with brick-and-mortar businesses. It will turn its Santa Monica, Calif., offices into its corporate headquarters.

• 1/16/01 - Crossgain Corp., a software-services enterprise, abruptly fired about a quarter of its employees in an attempt to cool tensions between itself and Microsoft. The unusual action affected more than 20 of Crossgain's 80 workers, all of whom were former employees of Microsoft, including Crossgain's two founders and its chief executive officer. Microsoft officials are angry at the prospect that Crossgain employees might improperly compete with their former employer.

• 1/16/01 - Rhythms NetConnections, a provider of high-speed Internet service, said it laid off 450 workers, or about 23 percent of its staff, to save cash. The layoffs will reduce Rhythms' work force to about 1,550 workers from 2,000.

• 1/16/01 - EYada.com, an Internet broadcaster, has laid off roughly one-third of its staff, or 30 of its 90 employees. The company last week canceled 17 Internet radio shows, because the shows had not attracted an audience.

• 1/16/01 - Intershop Communications, an e-commerce software company, said it would reduce its U.S. staff by 80 positions.

• 1/16/01 - Mobshop.com, a group shopping site where the more people that buy a product, the less they each pay, has stopped accepting retail orders. The company plans to refocus solely on selling demand-aggregation technology to business sites.