OPEN THE PORTAL DOORS, HAL

With industry eyes on Yahoo's kick-ass earnings and anticipated music play, the other big Net portals are gettin' busy spreading their reach.

Once merely a place to search the Net and have a free e-mail account, portals are competing more fiercely for eyeballs—and marketshare—than ever. Lycos, recently swallowed by Spanish giant Terra (which is, in turn, owned by phone behemoth Telefonica), announced on 7/18 the launch of its Lycos Anywhere wireless program. Claiming to be the first WAP-enabled search engine launched by a major portal, the initiative will be device-agnostic and feature an array of personalization options.

Once Lycos is folded into pending mega-dot-com Terra Lycos, those features will be available to Telefonica's reported 60 million customers worldwide. Lycos Anywhere will be a services jewel in the crown of the pending wireless joint venture between TL and Telefonica.

"Lycos Anywhere is the most comprehensive wireless offering of any major portal, with a combination of content, search, e-commerce and applications," trumpeted Lycos EVP Ron Sege. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to scan through 2,328 Spanish coupon offers and see how my Yahoo stock is doing." Speaking of stock, Lycos was down 4 3/8 at presstime, to 53.

In other Net doorway news, ExciteAtHome has made nice with Dutch-based European rival Chello, resulting in a joint venture with the fetching moniker ExciteChello. The Dutch netco will be sewn together with Excite's international ops for a big ol' broadband jamboree; Roger Lynch will serve as CEO of the new entity. "This deal creates global scale in the Internet's most dynamic growth area—broadband," declared E@H CEO and Co-Chairman of the new company George Bell. "And speaking of dynamic, check out our rockin' Power Point presentation."

AtHome's stock was up 0.13 to 19 11/16 at presstime.

ExciteChello is valued at around $5 billion. If TV set-top boxes and other "convergence" developments grow as expected, the company will be in the broadband catbird seat. If not, expecte a lot of digital bake sales.