iWon completes Excite.com takeover

iWon, the new owner of Excite.com, said it has migrated data and online traffic to its Web servers, completing a takeover of the portal assets acquired in the Excite@Home bankruptcy.

InfoSpace and iWon split the assets of Excite.com in the Excite@Home bankruptcy proceedings last month for $10 million, a big discount compared with the $6.7 billion @Home paid for Excite in 1999.

Under the deal, InfoSpace agreed to power the search and directory portions of Excite while selling or licensing the other parts of the portal to iWon.

Since acquiring Excite, iWon's team of 110 engineers has been working to re-create Excite and its features, rewriting code throughout the site. With the takeover completed, iWon changed its corporate identity to The Excite Network. iWon.com, however, still operates as a separate Web site.

Last week, iWon moved Excite customer data and quietly launched Excite on its technology.

"For the user it was completely seamless," said Excite Network spokeswoman Erica Schietinger. "It was a bear of a task, but we've re-created 99 percent of the functions people were used to."

Schietinger said the early feedback so far has been mostly positive. "The users are happy and we're happy," she said.