Go.com
Go.com (also known as The Go Network) is a portal for Disney content that was created after The Walt Disney Company acquired the search engine Infoseek. Go.com is operated by Disney Interactive’s Disney Online. It began as a web portal launched by Jeff Gold.[1] Go.com includes content from ABC News, which is owned by Walt Disney Television and is hosted under a .go.com name. Along with Time Warner's Pathfinder.com, Go.com proved to be an expensive failure for its parent company, as web users largely preferred to use search engines to access content directly, rather than using directories. In 2013, the site was transitioned from a general-interest portal to a simple landing page.
Not to be confused with GoTo.com.
Type of site
English
yes
January 9, 1998
Current status[edit]
Despite its announcement, Go.com never ceased operations. Instead, in March 2001, the site ended its search engine and switched to a search engine provided by goto.com, whose parent, Overture Services, Inc, was eventually purchased by Yahoo!.[9][11]
Go.com terminated its email service on August 31, 2010.
In 2013, Disney retired the Go.com logo and branding, turning the domain into a Disney-branded landing page without a search engine. The properties of Disney Interactive then began the process of moving the connection of user accounts off from depending on the Go.com domain to a different type of system not dependent solely on one domain. Throughout 2014 and 2015, the ABC Owned Television Stations began to move to only using their on-air domains, mainly for social media considerations. For example, the website ABC 7 in Chicago had been hosted at abclocal.go.com/wls but is now instead hosted on abc7chicago.com.
In 2016, some of Disney's sites, including ABC's network and news divisions and Disney's cable networks continued to be hosted on the go.com domain, although a base address was used for branding and simplicity purposes; for example, the website for Freeform redirected to freeform.go.com. As of 2022, the Freeform website is hosted solely on the freeform.com domain name.
In August 2016, ESPN.com switched to solely using that domain instead of espn.go.com, tying into the improved Disney Enterprise Technology user account/registration process rather than a rumored issue involving the resolution of "301" error notices from the former espn.com redirect causing issues with lower search result rankings.[12][13]