THE market is already becoming crowded by Web pages that exist for no other reason than to direct you to other Web pages. But as far as Wall Street is concerned, it thinks it has another Microsoft or Netscape on its hands.
On March 7th, Yahoo - the best known of the Web search engines - announced that it was going public, quickly followed by an arch rival, Excite Inc.
Yahoo will have an initial offer of 2.6 million shares, hoping to raise around $25 million, while Excite's initial public offering of 1.3 million shares could generate $18 million or more.
Why all the fuss? Search engines are often far more valuable than the pages they index because they are a very busy crossroads at the moment.
And in a world of virtually infinite information, the information about the choices is rapidly becoming more important than the choices themselves. As Wired's editor Kevin Kelly pointed out recently, "TV Guide makes more money than the three major TV networks [in the US] combined.
Most index companies allow free searches, and generate much of their revenue by online advertising. Because many newcomers to the Web are likely to go to an index to find their way around, the indexers have a high profile that is attractive to advertisers.
"Any of these services, especially services that have real quality search engines and serve as a registered base of operation for Internet pointing, have serious earnings potential over time," Tim Bajarin of the San Jose based firm Creative Strategies told Reuters earlier this month. Despite the current hype on Wall Street, Yahoo itself had fairly modest beginnings. The brainchild of David Filo and Jerry Yang, they started it as a hobby two years ago, while doing postgraduate research at Stanford University.
One Internet myth is that Yahoo stands for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle" but Filo and Yang claim they picked it because they considered themselves, well, yahoos.
They built the guide to keep track of their personal interests on the Net, then they converted it into a customised database for other users. This involved developing their own software to locate, identify and edit material more efficiently.
In early 1995 Marc Andreessen, co founder of the rapidly growing software company Netscape, invited them to move their files over to Netscape's larger computers - and Stanford's beleaguered network could finally return to normal.
Yahoo bases its index on an electronic application form which Web site producers fill out to be included. But it has encountered some difficult choices trying to decide how some sites ought to be categorised.
For instance, it listed a Web site for Messianic Jews - who observe Jewish traditions but also hold strong beliefs about Jesus Christ - in both Christian and Jewish categories. Some Jewish groups criticised the decision, calling for boycotts of the service.