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Posted at 5:05 PM PT, Feb 10, 1999
Yahoo is making it easier for small businesses to create an online store through its Internet portal by offering a set of new services. The new offerings expand Yahoo's existing services for helping small businesses that want to promote themselves or their merchandise online, and are expected to cost approximately $100.

Yahoo's attempt to woo online stores to its site with new services is in response to competitor Netscape Communication's announcement last June of a similar offering, said Tim Sloane, an analyst at Aberdeen Group, in Boston.

"The market has only started to react to this announcement," Sloane said.

With America Online's recent acquisition of Netscape, the competition among Web browsers seeking to lure small-business customers is more intense, and more stores are waking up to the fact that they need a web presence to remain in business, according to Sloane.

"[Small companies] don't know it, but they are affected a lot," Sloane said. "In the next few years the 'Net will generate $2 trillion worth of business."

Additional details on service specifics from Yahoo were not available. Yahoo currently offers several small business services including Yahoo Site, a site offering 25M bytes of storage space and a suite of tracking and reporting tools; Yahoo Store, which allows merchants to create, publish, and manage online stores; Yahoo Business Express, which lists businesses in the main Yahoo directory; Yahoo Connected Office, which offers communication tools like message boards and chat for no charge; and Yahoo Small, which offers general small-business information, products, and services.

Yahoo Inc., in Santa Clara, California, can be reached at www.yahoo.com.

Soo Jin Park, of the IDG News Service, an InfoWorld affiliate, is based in Boston.