Yahoo! buys dotmusic and GamesDomain content

2 November 2003 19:59 GMT / By Andy Lynn

They were already teamed up together to shore up BT's broadband provision and allow the telecoms giant to let go of the heavily promoted BT Openworld service, creating BT Yahoo! Broadband. A dialup service will be launched soon.

Now Yahoo has added two more established BT services. Games Domain has continued as an independent games site under BT ownership and at the moment it's unclear whether the main site will continue and content will be shared (as now with Reuters for current affairs news) or whether both will shrink into an integrated portal.

Duncan Ingram, MD of BT Openworld, remarked: 'This agreement is a natural extension of our stated strategy and adds to the attractiveness of the overall BT Yahoo! offering.”
Mark Opzoomer, MD and Regional VP of Yahoo! Europe: 'Yahoo! has a proven track record in the music and gaming field and the additional content from dotmusic and Games Domain will further the goal of providing Yahoo!'s UK & Ireland consumers with a compelling customer proposition.'
BT cannot be happier with leaving main operations to an established search engine making profit from its extended services such as larger mailboxes and email forwarding, leaving it free to get on with being the ISPs' ISP for broadband provision. Everybody wins, Yahoo's expansion provides further growth. The second rare sighting of a good news story for BT regarding the Internet which required no official orders from Oftel.